| BANNED A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology Frederick Rowe Davis New Haven: Yale University Press, November 2014 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-300-20517-6 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-300-20517-1 | 264pp. | HC/BWI | $40.00 | |
| Page x: | "...the passage of the National Environmental Protection Act." |
| S/B "National Environmental Policy Act". See What is NEPA? at the EPA Web site. (The author makes this mistake, a quite natural one, throughout the book.) |
| Page 5: | "Historian Adelynne Whitaker argued that the quick passage of Insecticide Act hinged on industry acceptance...." |
| Missing article: S/B "of the Insecticide Act". |
| Page 14: | "Finally, Gross settled on Lyndol, which was a mixture of TOCP." |
| Usually, mixtures are described with two or more ingredients. |
| Page 14: | "When it passed the volatility test, Gross asked the chemical wholesaler about its toxicity. The wholesaler relayed this question to the Celluloid Corporation, which produced Lyndol, and the chemical company noted that it was presumably nontoxic." |
| Bad wording. Either the author made a careless mistake, or Celluloid was dodging the issue. |
| Page 15: | "...more than four hundred people checked in to the Cincinnati General Hospital with muscular pain, weakness in both the upper and lower extremities, and rather minimal sensory findings." |
| I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Perhaps a sort of diminished sensation? |
| Page 18: | "The quest for new chemical therapies following the success of Paul Ehrlich's Salvarsan inspired a campaign..." |
| Neither Paul Ehrlich nor Salvarsan has been mentioned previously, and neither appears in the index. |
| Page 19: | "...as well as small amounts of the following flavor-enhancing substances: elixir flavor, saccharin, caramel..." |
| The term should be defined, especially since this "elixir flavor" is intended to flavor an elixir. |
| Page 27: | Quoting Bliss: "...which susceptibility is inversely proportional to the logarithm of the dose applied." |
| So as the dose is raised, the test animal's susceptibility goes down? This makes no sense. |
| Page 43: | Quoting a study: "It remains effective for a longer period than derris and has the advantage over the lime and the lead arsenate sprays..." |
| Another failure to pre-define or index "derris". |
| Page 80: | "Bliss cited a study of the toxicity of two pesticides [...] used in combination in which the authors did not find evidence of synergism while another researcher utilized the same original data and discovered definite evidence of synergism." |
| Synergism vs. synergy. |
| Page 87: | "A young doctoral student named John Doull (b. 1922) developed a method for the biosynthesis of radioactive bufagin..." |
| This substance was not mentioned previously. But it is indexed, and context farther down the page makes clear it is a component of toad venom. Still, two or three words describing it would improve the sentence.1 |
| Page 92: | "Organic phosphate compounds link many phosphorus atoms to oxygen atoms (termed esters of polyphosphoric acids)." |
| Clumsy definition. It's not the oxygen atoms which are so termed, but the resulting compounds. |
| Page 126: | "In their statement, Hayes and Neal acknowledged that DDT was a highly toxic in large amounts..." |
| Extra word: S/B "highly toxic". |
| Page 150: | "The regulatory power of this clause was not lost on legislators who supported the farm bloc: the FDA must ban any suspected carcinogen." |
| This overstates the case, since previous paragraphs say it will ban anything shown to be a carcinogen. It nevertheless captures the truth, since while pesticides have not been shown to cause cancer in humans, those shown to cause cancer in test animals are fairly suspected of being carcinogens in humans. In other words, this is just a bad word choice. |
| Page 159: | "Carson answered this question with additional data showing that seven million pounds of parathion was applied in the United States and..." |
| Number error: S/B "were applied". |
| Page 160: | "Yet Carson challenged this view citing a case in which parathion posed a real threat to workers weeks after spraying..." |
| Missing comma: S/B "view, citing a case". |
| Page 168: | "The most anticipated witnesses, Rachel Carson, appeared before the committee on June 4, 1963." |
| Number error: S/B "witness, Rachel Carson, appeared". |
| Page 206: | "Meanwhile, the link between pesticides and cancer seemed evermore tenuous." |
| Missing space: S/B "ever more". |
| Page 209: | "Such a finding squared well with one of Rachel Carson's greatest concerns in Silent Spring, namely, the decline of topline predators as a result of eggshell thinning..." |
| Missing word: S/B "topline avian predators". |
| Page 217: | "...resulting in endocrine disruption, particularly in topline predators, such as bald eagles, peregrines, ospreys, and brown pelicans." |
| Missing word: S/B "topline avian predators". |
| Page 219: | "Since their development as nerve gasses during World War II, scientists were well aware of the toxicity of organophosphates to all organisms." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "developing them as nerve gases". (Note also the spelling of "gases.") |
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