The XX Files

I’ve nearly no time to blog as I am in the midst of moving and then, traveling. But it’s Women’s History Month, so there’s no way I’d let March go by without noting some news under the rubric of “Women, Media, and the Environment.”

So intermittently, I’ll be posting some brief (for me!) items directing you to interesting reading by and about the intersection of women and ecology.

First, I offer Marla Cone’s eye-opening report in the Los Angeles Times yesterday: “Public Health Agency Linked to Chemical Industry." It opens:

For nearly a decade, a federal agency has been responsible for assessing the dangers that chemicals pose to reproductive health. But much of the agency's work has been conducted by a private consulting company that has close ties to the chemical industry, including manufacturers of a compound in plastics that has been linked to reproductive damage.

In 1998, the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction was established within the National Institutes of Health to assess the dangers of chemicals and help determine which ones should be regulated. Sciences International, an Alexandria, Va., consulting firm that has been funded by more than 50 industrial companies, has played a key role in the center's activities, reviewing the risks of chemicals, preparing reports, and helping select members of its scientific review panel and setting their agendas, according to government and company documents.

Hmm. The old adage about the fox watching the henhouse comes to mind. This story is urgent on two fronts: It provides yet another example of the Bush Administrations’ slippery science -- as when it’s edited or spun the findings of government scientists to suit its policies, or tried to suppress science with which it disagrees. It's also especially galling considering women’s special vulnerability to toxic chemicals.

Follow this link to read the rest of the article.

Marla Cone, by the way, is an award-winning environmental journalist and author of the book Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic, which reveals that, far from being one of the world’s most pristine places, the Arctic is actually one of the most poisoned. Here’s a snippet from one review:

Tons of dangerous chemicals and pesticides from the United States, Europe,and Asia are being carried to the Arctic by northbound winds and waves and am-plified in the ocean's food web. As a result, Inuit women who eat seal and whale meat have far higher concentrations of PCBs and mercury in their breast milk than women who live in the most industrialized areas of the world, and they pass these poisons to their infants, leaving them susceptible to disease. Polar bears near the North Pole are increasingly born with altered immune systems and sex hormones.

And it's melting, to boot. Read the rest of the review here.

(By the way,you can order a copy of Silent Snow, or any book, by clicking the Powell's Books icon on the lower right of this blog. I get a small fee for each order which, in a small way, helps to support my cyberwork here.)