As executive director of Environmental Defence Canada, Rick Smith is one of Canada's leading environmentalists. Bruce Lourie is an environmental professional with expertise in toxic pollution and mercury. He is president of the Ivey Foundation. The authors live in Toronto.
Praise for Slow Death by Rubber Duck
“Beware the smiling creature in your bathtub: it #8217;s yellow, it
squeaks, your kids love it, and it gets into your bloodstream
—literally. —High Country News
“Enviro–porn. —Forbes.com
“Undertaking a cheeky experiment in self–contamination,
professional Canadian environmentalists Smith and Lourie expose
themselves to hazardous everyday substances, then measure the
consequences . . . Throughout, the duo weave scientific data and
recent political history into an amusing but unnerving narrative,
refusing to sugarcoat any of the data (though protection is
possible, exposure is inevitable) while maintaining a welcome sense
of humor. —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Slow Death by Rubber Duck #8217;s real achievement is in
documenting how chemical giants stay a step ahead of regulators,
and those revelations make the book a fascinating and frightening
read. —The Week
“Slow Death by Rubber Duck . . . isn #8217;t just alarmist
environmental shock and awe. It #8217;s a thoughtful look at how
pollution has shifted over the years from something tangible and
transparent (industrial pollutants as the cause of acid rain) to
something abstract and nuanced (BPA #8217;s links to breast
cancer). The challenges this change presents, as many of the world
#8217;s top scientists explain in these pages, should be of serious
concern to us all. —O: The Oprah Magazine
“Slow Death by Rubber Duck is hard–hitting in a way that turns your
stomach and yet also instills hope for a future in which consumers
make safer, more informed choices and push their governments to
impose tougher regulations on the chemicals all around us. —The
Washington Post
“This is one scary book. Using a variety of test methods, the
authors determined individual body burdens, #8217; or the toxic
chemical load we carry. The innocuous rubber duck, for example,
offers a poison soup of phthalates that permeate the environment
and humans. #8217; From other products and food we also have a
collection of chemicals shorthanded as PFCs, PFOAs, PSOSs, and
PCBs. None of them are good, and they are everywhere, thanks to
Teflon (which drew the largest administrative penalty against a
company ever obtained by the EPA), Stainmaster, nonflammable
pajamas, tuna (hello, mercury), and, would you believe,
anti–bacterial products. The legacy of our chemically addicted
society is not just all around us but also inside us and it is
killing us, as the Teflon case proved. (Workers in West Virginia
believed that having a high–paying job often meant getting sick,
#8217; and many were reluctant to sue and possibly scare DuPont
away.) Poised between chirpy green–living manuals and dense
academic papers, Smith and Lourie have crafted a true guide for the
thinking consumer. If readers don #8217;t change their ways after
reading this one, then they never will. —Colleen Mondor,
Booklist
“Fantastically important —an indispensable guide to surviving in an
industrial age. —Tim Flannery, author of Now or Never and The
Weather Makers
“One of the most disturbing facts I #8217;ve heard in the last few
years is the new scientific evidence showing that Arctic people who
rely on traditional diets —fish and marine mammals —are
experiencing a world without baby boys. Well, not quite —but twice
as many girls are being born, because male fetuses are weaker (you
women knew this!), and baby boys cannot survive the level of PCBs,
mercury and other toxins that find their final home in the Arctic.
Slow Death by Rubber Duck tells the other end of this story —how
ordinary household products we consume here in the U.S. are the
font of this toxic rain that falls on the Arctic —but that while
the Arctic is the most distant victim of these poisons, we
ourselves are the first. —Carl Pope, executive director, Sierra
Club
“This book is a powerful reminder that what we do to Mother Earth,
we do to ourselves. Read it to see why we have to change the way we
live and get off our destructive path. —David Suzuki, environmental
activist and host of The Nature of Things
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