A disturbing, well-researched study with solid proposals to address a deep-seated problem.
Why our clothes could be slowly undermining our health.
As Wicker shows, fast-fashion garments often have a cocktail of dangerous chemicals embedded in the fabric, and there is no effective national regulation of them. The author, founder and editor-in-chief of EcoCult, first became aware of this issue when investigating health problems reported by airline employees, mainly rashes and eye irritations but sometimes much more serious concerns. The cause was traced back to new uniforms that, like most garments sold in the U.S., had been produced overseas. This led Wicker to look more broadly at the clothing industry, and she discovered that nearly everything contained harmful chemicals, ranging from fungicides to anti-wrinkle additives. Many dyes, especially those used to produce neon colors, are used in dangerous quantities, and toxins can be absorbed through the skin or even inhaled. Wicker supplies a useful glossary of chemicals and notes that one of the most common is formaldehyde, which is harmless in small doses but carcinogenic when used intensively. People with allergies are often the first affected, but there are links to broader health issues, and Wicker has a long list of horror stories. Even more, in the countries where the garments are produced, there are cases where entire communities have been poisoned by toxic fumes or contaminated water. Wicker points to some clothing companies that have started to detoxify their products, but others are seemingly willing to prioritize profits over customer health. She argues for stronger regulation to ensure transparency and a higher level of safety, with an expansion of the oversight of the Consumer Product Safety Commission to include clothing. At another level, consumers can help themselves by avoiding cheap knockoffs, buying natural fabrics, minimizing dry-cleaning, and staying away from garments that have been heavily dyed. Also, writes the author, trust your nose: If something smells bad, it probably is.
A disturbing, well-researched study with solid proposals to address a deep-seated problem.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780593422618
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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