Rutgers University Press Tainted Earth: Smelters, Public Health, and the Environment (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine)

Product Description Thoroughly grounded in extensive archival research, Tainted Earth traces the rise of public health concerns about nonferrous smelting in the western United States, focusing on three major facilities: Tacoma, Washington; El Paso, Texas; and Bunker Hill, Idaho. It documents the response from community residents, public health scientists, the industry, and the government to pollution from smelters and the long road to protecting public health and the environment. Review "Tainted Earth stands out as a compelling demonstration of just how central lead and copper smelters were to the making of our modern science and regulation of environmental pollution in the United States. The research and writing on display are smoothly woven and in places, inspired."--Christopher Sellers "Stony Brook University""Tainted Earth provides a detailed history, with a technical focus, of the environmental impact of three metal smelters located in Tacoma, Washington, El Paso, Texas, and Kellogg, Idaho. This is a well-documented story, providing a warning to other nations where the smelters now glow."-- "Choice""Marianne Sullivan's Tainted Earth makes a major contribution to the complex history of smelter smoke."-- "Pacific Northwest Quarterly""Sullivan weaves compelling stories of communities where children's health was irreversibly damaged by heavy metal pollution following smelting industry efforts to downplay and obfuscate the risks of pollution, and efforts to stave off environmental regulation. Well-written and engaging...Tainted Earth will appeal to students oand professionals across a variety of fields, including public health, history of science, toxicology, geography, and environmental policy."-- "Global Public Health""Sullivan's comparative study is unique; she sets many of the regulatory problems of smelters into a firm analytical framework that will be useful for many years."--Christian Warren "Brooklyn College" About the Author MARIANNE SULLIVAN is an assistant professor of public health at William Paterson University of New Jersey and served as an epidemiologist for Public Health-Seattle and King County in Washington. She is the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed public health journals.