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This page was last modified on 21 July 2024.
| TOXIC TRUTH A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle over Lead Lydia Denworth Boston: Beacon Press, March 2008 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-8070-0032-8 | ||||
| ISBN 0-8070-0032-9 | 249pp. | HC | $27.95 | |
| Page xiii: | "Beginning in the 1970s, in a series of interesting though troubling experiments concerning the sale of a drug that had been shown to be dangerous... [...] (In the real-world case on which the experiments were based, it fell to the Federal Drug Administration to ban the drug in question after the company refused to stop selling it." |
| What is this drug? Why not identify it? (Also, S/B "Food and Drug Administration".) |
| Page 2: | "Over the centuries, it [lead] has had a few other uses as well: in battery cases, bearings, building materials..." |
| S/B "battery electrodes". (Some other items in this list may also be incorrect.) |
| Page 6: | "First, they would use not lead ores, which weren't old enough, but meteorites, which Brown and others believed had formed at the same time as the earth and remained chemically unchanged while rocketing around the atmosphere." |
| This could go two ways. I prefer to think the author means that the meteorites did not change while orbiting around the solar system. In that case, "rocketing" is OK as poetic license. On the other hand, she might mean that passage through the atmosphere did not change them. It's a dubious assumption, and also ignores the question of contamination once they land. (BTW, "earth" should be capitalized.) |
| Page 8: | "One of the centers of research for the project was the University of Chicago, where the newly created 'Metallurgical Laboratories' provided cover for work on the bomb." |
| The title was singular: S/B "Metallurgical Laboratory". |
| Page 27: | "Needleman gave the girl EDTA intravenously, which was less painful than an injection." |
| Uh oh: Probably S/B "orally", since intravenous administration of a drug requires an injection. |
| Page 29: | "The compound 'white lead,' which is actually lead carbonate though it is indeed pure white..." |
| Unnecessary explanation: The colloquial name for a chemical compound need not specify its composition. |
| Page 49: | "Called Project 53 and titled Age Dating of Rocks, Patterson received between $20,000 and $30,000 per year from API beginning in 1955." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "the research brought Patterson". |
| Page 50: | "The first part was relatively easy. Midgley built a high-speed camera out of a tomato can and rubber bands and photographed what was happening inside the engine..." |
| Relatively easy? This Midgley wasn't just a natural inventor, he was a natural magician! (Or the author does not clearly describe what he did.) |
| Page 51: | "Two more successful antiknock additives, selenium and tellurium..." |
| Tellurium is extremely rare, hence expensive. It's a mystery why Midgley would have even considered it. |
| Page 55: | "It was a turning point. Confronted with an early choice between corporate interests demanding absolute proof of harm and health ex-perts insisting on absolute proof of safety, America chose business." |
| Unwanted hyphen: S/B "experts". |
| Page 80: | "With a few pencil-and-paper tests such as Portius mazes and a standard test of word knowledge in hand..." |
| Spelling: S/B "Porteus mazes". Professor Stanley Porteus invented this nonverbal test of intelligence in Melbourne, Australia. |
| Page 133: | "(The mass spectrometer was in the basement, with bird droppings taped to the side to remind users of the fallibility of machines.)" |
| It seems to me that this is (or should be) rather a warning of the possibility of human error — not noticing those bird droppings. |
| Page 173: | "(The research camp in Greenland is now underwater because of global warming.)" |
| Missing space: S/B "under water". |
| Page 182: | Sandra Scarr: "He [Needleman] could not have been meaner or nastier." |
| More misrepresentation: He did let her use the bathroom; he might have refused. |
| Page 197: | "Other honorees that year included his old mentor C. Everett Koop...." |
| I don't recall Koop being described as Needleman's mentor. It's true he's mentioned on page 24 as chief of pediatrics at CHOP. |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.