Synopses & Reviews
Today, there are thousands of synthetic chemicals used to make our clothing, cosmetics, household products, electronic devices, even our children's toys. Many of these chemicals help us live longer and more comfortable lives, but some of these highly useful chemicals are also persistent, toxic, and dangerous to our health and the environment. For fifty years, the conventional approach to hazardous chemicals has focused on regulation, barriers, and protection. In
Chemicals without Harm, Ken Geiser proposes a different strategy, based on developing and adopting safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals rather than focusing exclusively on controlling them.
Geiser reviews past government policies focused on controlling chemicals, describes government initiatives outside the United States that have begun to implement a more sustainable chemical policy, and offers an overview of the chemicals industry and market. He develops a safer chemicals policy framework that includes processes for characterizing, classifying, and prioritizing chemicals; generating and using new chemical information; and promoting transitions to safer chemicals.
The shift in strategy described by Geiser will require broad changes in science, the chemicals economy, and government policy. Geiser shows that it is already beginning, identifying an emerging movement of scientists, corporate managers, environmental activists, and government leaders who are fashioning a new, twenty-first-century approach to chemicals.
Review
Ken Geiser has done it again. Chemicals without Harm weaves together the disparate literatures and perspectives on chemical policy into a comprehensive, systematic whole, considering -- among other things -- law and policy, business history, economics, and environmental science. Written with a clarity that makes it accessible to all, and a depth of understanding that makes it essential reading for academics, business people, advocates, and policymakers alike. The MIT Press
Review
Pragmatic, ambitious, comprehensive, and humane, here is a systematic yet visionary blueprint for bringing smart politics together with good science to create tomorrow's clean economy. Timothy Malloy, UCLA School of Law and Fielding School of Public Health
Review
This book provides a forward-looking blueprint for the modernization of our chemicals policy that is urgently needed to address emerging products, materials, and production processes based on nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Daniel Sarewitz, Codirector and Cofounder, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, and Professor, Science and Society, Arizona State University
Synopsis
A proposal for a new chemicals strategy: that we work to develop safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals rather than focusing exclusively on controlling them.
Today, there are thousands of synthetic chemicals used to make our clothing, cosmetics, household products, electronic devices, even our children's toys. Many of these chemicals help us live longer and more comfortable lives, but some of these highly useful chemicals are also persistent, toxic, and dangerous to our health and the environment. For fifty years, the conventional approach to hazardous chemicals has focused on regulation, barriers, and protection. In Chemicals without Harm, Ken Geiser proposes a different strategy, based on developing and adopting safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals rather than focusing exclusively on controlling them.
Geiser reviews past government policies focused on controlling chemicals, describes government initiatives outside the United States that have begun to implement a more sustainable chemical policy, and offers an overview of the chemicals industry and market. He develops a safer chemicals policy framework that includes processes for characterizing, classifying, and prioritizing chemicals; generating and using new chemical information; and promoting transitions to safer chemicals.
The shift in strategy described by Geiser will require broad changes in science, the chemicals economy, and government policy. Geiser shows that it is already beginning, identifying an emerging movement of scientists, corporate managers, environmental activists, and government leaders who are fashioning a new, twenty-first-century approach to chemicals.
About the Author
Ken Geiser is Professor Emeritus of Work Environment at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Founder and past Codirector of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, and the author of Materials Matter: Toward a Sustainable Materials Policy. One of the authors of the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act, he was Director of the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute for thirteen years.