Pandora’s Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy

Book Description:

Pandora’s Poison presents a solution to one of the most insidious environmental problems of our time: the global build-up of toxic chemicals. In a thorough and accessible analysis, biologist Joe Thornton shows how global organochlorine pollution is already contributing to infertility, immune suppression, cancer, and developmental disorders in humans and wildlife. Thornton proposes a major shift in environmental science and policy. He shows that the only practical solution is to take global action on broad classes of hazardous chemicals and the processes that produce them, starting with organochlorines. He lays out a democratically controlled program to replace the production and use of chlorine gas and its derivatives with safer, effective, and economically feasible alternatives, which are already available for the majority of chlorine uses. Pandora’s Poison promises to revolutionize the debate over pollution, health, and the role of science in public policy.