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Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children

By Verna Noel Jones, Special to the Rocky

Published August 21, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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A farmer outside Yuma uses herbicide to kill weeds in one of his cornfields.

Photo by Matt McClain © The Rocky/2007

A farmer outside Yuma uses herbicide to kill weeds in one of his cornfields.

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* Nonfiction. By Philip Shabecoff and Alice Shabecoff. Random House, $26. Grade: A

Book in a nutshell: Rachel Carson first warned of the harmful assault of pesticides on the environment in her 1962 book Silent Spring. At that time, about 200 pesticide products were on the market. Now some 900 pesticide ingredients formulated into 18,000 different pesticide products are actively being used nationwide, causing disease, disability and dysfunction to one of every three of America's 73 million children, warn authors Philip and Alice Shabecoff.

Philip, chief environmental correspondent for The New York Times for 14 years, and Alice, a freelance journalist, present detailed evidence showing that children are 10 times more vulnerable than adults to cancer-causing chemicals and accumulate half of their lifetime risk of cancer by age two.

Since the 1970s, brain cancer in kids is up about 35 percent and acute lymphocytic leukemia is up 47 percent. Long-term studies, they say, have shown that the five most popular varieties of weed and seed garden herbicides are associated with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Pollutants also have been linked to many birth defects.

The authors name names in providing evidence of harm to our children, and show how the U.S. president, Congress and scientists-for- hire (who create "purposely flawed studies") aid and abet the polluters.

Best tidbit: So you think someone's policing these powerful industries? Look at the formidable-sounding Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy. Founded by the Grocery Manufacturers of America, its advisory board now includes executives from GMA along with DuPont, Monsanto, Kellogg and Kraft Foods, say the Shabecoffs.

Pros: The authors aren't afraid to "out" elected officials who sell out to big business. Equally important, they end the book on a high note with pages full of reference materials and Web sites showing consumers how to protect themselves and voice their "collective outrage" about hazardous substances.

Cons: None.

Final word: This well-documented, highly readable page-turner contains shockingly important information critical to the health of families.