It’s a scary premise, considering the ubiquity of these chemicals in our lives. But it’s maddeningly difficult to prove conclusively that multisyllabic compounds are harming us. (The European Union doesn’t require such proof: guided by the precautionary principle, it has banned entire categories of chemicals from use in consumer goods.) In “What’s Gotten Into Us?: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World,” McKay Jenkins, a professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of several previous books (including “Bloody Falls of the Coppermine,” about Catholic missionaries murdered in the Arctic), acknowledges that linking negative outcomes — like low birth weight and breast cancer — to specific chemicals is impossible. “In medicine, cause and effect are not always clear,” he writes. Part of the problem is that we lack a control group of purified humans upon which to experiment (even newborns are polluted with synthetic chemicals), if ethics in fact allowed such a thing. Another complication is that chemicals reach us through a variety of exposure routes, in varying combinations and in doses with different effects at different life stages.
The uncertainty, which manufacturers use to maintain the status quo, doesn’t bother Jenkins. Playing a genial if sometimes befuddled Everyman, he plunges ahead with a toxico-chemical survey of his surroundings. He declines to wallow in technical details, but he also fails to cite conflicting studies, and his breezy style sometimes borders on carelessness. He’s profligate with the word “toxic” (toxic to whom, and at what level?), and he’s vague about exposure routes. Sure, some Prius parts contain perchlorate, the primary ingredient of rocket fuel, but how many people eat their seat belts? If the exposure route is air, how and at what rate do seat belts degrade? He says baby shampoo contains formaldehyde, “which causes cancer and compromises the immune system,” but doesn’t explain at what level and through what exposure routes. (The E.P.A. recognizes formaldehyde as a human carcinogen under conditions of unusually high or prolonged inhalation exposure; I’m no formaldehyde apologist, but this glossing of detail left me feeling slightly distrustful of his reporting.) Jenkins also states that “premature births have jumped nearly 30 percent since 1981” and strongly implies a link with environmental chemicals. But a more significant factor may be the increasing use of fertility drugs, which lead to multiple births.
The more interesting parts here concern the chemical industry and the free rein it’s had to market scores of thousands of underscrutinized compounds. But it isn’t just chemicals that have gotten into us, Jenkins astutely notes: it’s also culture. “We are saturated with products, and marketing, and advertising,” he writes. “Our ignorance is not an accident.” Manufacturers fight labeling laws, and the federal government doesn’t adequately support independent research into the environmental and health impacts of even the most commonly used chemicals. Regulatory agencies are underfunded and understaffed, even as consumption of manufactured goods (and goods imported from countries with even less regulation than ours) continues to rise.
Consumers are hardly blameless, Jenkins says. We’ve allowed ourselves to become alienated from the products we use: we don’t know where they come from or how they’re made (let alone where they go when we’re done with them). The more this physical and psychological distance between our stuff and ourselves grows — a breach filled by brands — the more confused we get. “The dumber we feel, the less confident we are in our decisions,” Jenkins riffs. “The less confident we are, the more susceptible we become to the suggestion that everything is as it should be.” When we reach unthinkingly for a familiar brand, “we implicitly grant authority — and trust — to what manufacturers have told us, that a product is ‘safe.’ ” But doesn’t surrendering to corporate marketers cut both ways? Seventh Generation, a brand synonymous with a lighter environmental impact, is just as eager to win our trust as Dow Chemical.
Jenkins takes readers through his home in the company of an environmental toxicologist and on a walk through a big-box store with his wife, who isn’t a toxicologist. This latter detail is a pity, considering the numerous unanswered questions raised by the couple’s wanderings — sometimes as many as seven in a paragraph. When Jenkins reads the label of a deodorizer that masks pet smells, he writes, “I’d like to tell you what was in these products, but none listed a full set of ingredients.” A more dogged reporter would have picked up the phone and called the manufacturer or a chemical engineer.
Most of this book concerns the everyday products we use on our bodies and around our homes; it’s fast reading, with some welcome appearances by community leaders and businesspeople who have pressured companies to change their formulations or lawmakers to change the rules. It ends with an obligatory shout-out for green chemistry, and for a call for the redesign of consumer goods and a return to mindfulness (“reconnecting with our things,” that is). Jenkins argues that educating ourselves needn’t be exhausting and depressing; it can be empowering and energizing: “Once we have access to information, once we begin paying attention, we develop a fuller, more personal connection to the actions we take.”
The appendix provides sources for that information and a guide to safer consumer products. But we know by now — don’t we? — that we can’t shop our way out of trouble. To his credit, Jenkins encourages readers to push for larger, systemic changes, like reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 and the passage of local initiatives akin to those banning lawn pesticides in more than 50 Canadian municipalities.
Other books — in particular, last year’s “Story of Stuff,” by Annie Leonard — have made stronger cases for reform and offered more nuanced advice on how to join forces with like-minded people, organize pressure campaigns and lobby governments. Ideally, Jenkins would have noted the potential of shareholder initiatives and discussed the imperative to overturn last year’s Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which accords even more political influence to manufacturers.
For anyone who knows too much about the perils of knowing too little about the human health impacts of chemicals, “What’s Gotten Into Us?” may prove frustrating. But it’s a fine, user-friendly introduction to avoiding environmental hazards in the home, and an even better catalyst to questioning how we got to this point and transcending our unthinking reliance on chemicals that — at certain levels, in certain circumstances, at certain times in our lives — definitely do more harm than good.