The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-being
By Nena Baker
Published July 21, 2009 (Paperback) North Point Press
More Info: Nena Baker
I’m interviewing Nena Baker this afternoon on Open Book with Diana Page Jordan, about her book The Body Toxic, and Nena points past our two mics to my bright red plastic water bottle, and she says, basically, no, you can’t drink out of it.
But why not?! I love my water bottle. I was given it at Wordstock a few weeks ago, when I hosted a panel on Spiritual Writing for Beyond Words Publishing. I loved that panel. It was a great day, and I was given the hot water bottle. So, mathematically speaking, I transferred my joy from the event to my water bottle.
Turns out my beautiful water bottle leaks toxins into my water, and that maybe this type of plastic contributed to my being diagnosed with Diabetes Type Two a few years ago, when my BMI was 14%, and I danced three hours a day, drinking water out of bottles like those because it was clean, easy and available.
Easy got us into this trouble, according to Nena. She tells me on the air – and you can listen now to the podcast of my show – that America suddenly had money in the late 1950′s and early 60′s, and loved the idea of better living through chemistry, even Disney celebrated it for heaven sake.
From there, billion-dollar lobbies beat down earnest scientists who proved without a shadow of a doubt that our water bottles and plastic wrap, the teflon we cook on, and the coatings to keep us clean and dry, oh, yes, and the makeup and lotions we rub into our skin are filling our bodies with toxins, some nasty enough to mess up the penises of baby boys, or to keep us from getting pregnant at all. But we were lulled with expensive advertising, and by plastic PR people who insisted they were right, and the scientists were nuts.
But in the six years since Nena began writing the book, things have been changing. Most notably the Administration. With the appointment of Lisa Jackson — not the novelist — the scientist — as head of the EPA, we have hope of getting teeth in our environmental laws.
Nena says “change is on the horizon.” I love those words.
Now, I have to go buy myself a Clean Canteen so I can drink my water without polluting myself.
Nena Baker and Diana Page Jordan at PDX.FM
