Synopses & Reviews
Smelting is an industrial process involving the extraction of metal from ore. During this process, impurities in oreandmdash;including arsenic, lead, and cadmiumandmdash;may be released from smoke stacks, contaminating air, water, and soil with toxic-heavy metals.
The problem of public health harm from smelter emissions received little official attention for much for the twentieth century. Though people living near smelters periodically complained that their health was impaired by both sulfur dioxide and heavy metals, for much of the century there was strong deference to industry claims that smelter operations were a nuisance and not a serious threat to health. It was only when the majority of children living near the El Paso, Texas, smelter were discovered to be lead-exposed in the early 1970s that systematic, independent investigation of exposure to heavy metals in smelting communities began. Following El Paso, an even more serious led poisoning epidemic was discovered around the Bunker Hill smelter in northern Idaho. In Tacoma, Washington, a copper smelter exposed children to arsenicandmdash;a carcinogenic threat.
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. Marianne Sullivan documents the response from community residents, public health scientists, the industry, and the government to pollution from smelters as well as the long road to protecting public health and the environment. Placing the environmental and public health aspects of smelting in historical context, the book connects local incidents to national stories on the regulation of airborne toxic metals.
The nonferrous smelting industry has left a toxic legacy in the United States and around the world. Unless these toxic metals are cleaned up, they will persist in the environment and may sicken peopleandmdash;children in particularandmdash;for generations to come. The twentieth-century struggle to control smelter pollution shares many similarities with public health battles with such industries as tobacco and asbestos where industry supported science created doubt about harm, and reluctant government regulators did not take decisive action to protect the publicandrsquo;s health.
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"This impressively researched and judiciously argued book challenges readers to think in new ways about what happens when science, politics, and the environment intersect."
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"Hamblin's examination of radioactive waste dumping in Europe and America is an important and valuable study, particularly for those interested in the role of science, technology, and environment in modern life.
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"A fascinating account of the role of health physicists and marine scientists in the international politics and public relations of dumping radioactive waste at sea.
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Poison in the Well tells how British and American nuclear scientists have handled radioactive wastes since World War II, despite uncertainty about long-term genetic and somatic effects, creating a legacy that will last for thousands of years. Interdisciplinary turf battles, government secrecy, and technological hubris all play a role in this well-constructed narrative.
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"A fascinating account of the role of health physicists and marine scientists in the international politics and public relations of dumping radioactive waste at sea.
" Professor of History, Texas Tech University
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"This impressively researched and judiciously argued book challenges readers to think in new ways about what happens when science, politics, and the environment intersect." Robert W. Seidel - professor of History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota
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"Hamblin's study is timely and absorbing, discussing an aspect of the history of atomic energy programmes on which very little has been known. Poison in the Well is an incredibly precious expose"
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"An excellent and balanced book. Hamblin's story is compelling and complex. By avoiding simple conclusions, he provides great insight into Cold War international relations, the dilemmas of going nuclear, the difficulty in determining risk, and the continuing problems we face with untested or newly tested technologies."
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andquot;Tainted Earthand#160;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.and#160;The research and writing on display are smoothly woven and in places, inspired.andquot;
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andquot;Sullivanandrsquo;s comparative study is unique; she sets many of the regulatory problems of smelters into a firm analytical frameworkand#160;that will be useful for many years.andquot;
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Tainted Earth provides a detailed history, with a technical focus, of the environmental impact of three metal smelters located in Tacoma, Washington, El Paso,and#160;Texas, and Kellogg, Idaho. This is a well-documented story, providing a warning to other nations where the smelters now glow.andquot;
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andquot;Sullivan weaves compelling stories of communities where childrenand#39;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.andquot;
Synopsis
In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war while undertaking their own radioactive dumping in secret.
It may be instructive to link environmental pollution to the Soviet Union's corruption and failed political ideology, but as Jacob Hamblin writes in Poison in the Well, there is much to learn from the processes that shaped these same issues in the West. The United States and Britain were the first countries to begin sealing radioactive waste into large metal drums and disposing of them in oceans. These countries' policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, not to mention mishaps and subsequent cover-ups, defy convenient generalizations about secrecy and openness in the East and West during the cold war era. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? This book traces the development of the issue from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s. The salient difficulty was that the by-products of the nuclear age were deadly and would remain so for indefinite periods of time. Many controversial solutions were proposed over the years, and indeed the problem has yet to be solved: even today's scientists and politicians clash over plans to house the nation's most dangerous materials in Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Synopsis
Poison in the Wellprovides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s.
Synopsis
In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war.
Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s.
This is an important book for students and scholars in the history of science who want to explore a striking case study of the conflicts that so often occur at the intersection of science, politics, and international diplomacy.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Jacob Darwin Hamblin is an assistant professor of history at Oregon State University.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Threshold Illusions
Chapter 2 Radiation Anxieties
Chapter 3 The Other Atomic Scientists
Chapter 4 Forging an International Concensus
Chapter 5 No Atomic Graveyards
Chapter 6 The Environment as Cold War Terrain
Chapter 7 Purely for Political Reasons
Chapter 8 Confronting Environmentalism
Conclusion