Book Review: Toxic Deception

Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law, and Endangers Your Health, by Dan Fagin, Marianne Lavelle, and the Center for Public Integrity (Birch Lane Press, 1996, $24.95)

Even as evidence snowballs that many chemicals are toxic, manufacturers churn out their products with barely a glance from the EPA. Why doesn't our biggest regulatory agency respond to even the most suspicious chemicals? Toxic Deception offers a sobering answer. By focusing on four chemicals -- alachlor (Monsanto's carcinogenic pesticide for corn), atrazine (the nation's most heavily-used pesticide, introduced by Ciba-Geigy), formaldehyde (a preservative, disinfectant, and additive for plastics, textiles and building materials, care of DuPont and other companies), and perchloroethylene ("perc," the dry-cleaning degreaser made by Dow, among others) -- Toxic Deception details the menacing power of the chemical industry.

Fagin and Lavelle's exhaustive research proves that chemical companies illegally withhold information, as when DuPont suppressed its 1985 study linking formaldehyde to nasal cancer. Even victims who assert that manufacturers are responsible for their cancer, seizures, or birth defects often sign confidentiality agreements, as part of their legal settlements, that permanently conceal the details of their cases. Perhaps most disturbing is EPA's dependence on industry-funded research. Recent industry-funded studies of alachlor, atrazine, formaldehyde, and perc produced results that were favorable to the chemical in question 75% of the time; only 23% of non-industry-funded studies were favorable. Go figure.

The chemical industry, which sells more than $200 billion worth of goods annually, has deep pockets. It invests in massive public relations campaigns designed to assert that chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. The solution, as Toxic Deception too-briefly suggests, lies in consumer education, alternative technologies, and political activism of the kind that passed California's Proposition 65 in 1986, which requires labels for suspect ingredients. The law gives manufacturers an incentive to remove toxic chemicals from their products, using the power of the market to protect public health.