Toxic Deception

Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health, Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, Common Courage Press, 1999

This book examines the methods used by the chemical industry to keep unsafe, even dangerous, products on the market by focusing on the pesticides atrazine and alachlor, the dry cleaning chemical perchloroethylene, or perc for short (a metal degreaser), and formaldehyde, used in all sorts of building products.

Attempts by the Environmental Protection Administration to regulate, or even set an exposure level for, any of the thousands of chemicals currently in use (only a few of which have ever been tested) run into several obstacles. There is no way to isolate a person for anywhere up to several years, regulating even the air they breathe, exposing them only to Chemical X to determine a safe level of exposure. So the EPA is forced to rely on research done BY the chemical companies to determine exposure levels. If the EPA exposure level is too low (according to the chemical industry), they will get flooded with sackfuls of letters from everyday people, complaining about how the lower exposure level will cost thousands of jobs (and certainly encouraged by the chemical industry). EPA bureaucrats spend only a few years in their jobs; when someone else takes over the job, the chemical regulation process must start over from the beginning (which is just fine for the chemical industry).

In the rare case where a person is able to convince a judge or jury that their physical ailment was caused by exposure to a certain chemical, the company's out of court settlement offer is predicated on the sealing of all court records. This keeps potentially bad publicity away from the public and forces the next person suing a chemical company to start from the beginning.

Other methods used by the chemical companies to keep potentially unsafe products on the market include large campaign contributions, junkets for Congress and the press, the government/industry revolving door, misleading advertising and public relations, and a "take no prisoners" policy to anyone who says unfavorable things, all in the face of safer and cleaner alternatives already on the market.

This is an excellent picture of the chemical industry at work, a world where profits come first. It's eye-opening, and, unfortunately, very credible, and is highly recommended.