Mark Schapiro - The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products

The Ecology Center is very excited to be bringing investigative journalist and author Mark Schapiro to town to keynote our April 10 annual membership meeting on the campus of Washtenaw Community College. Schapiro’s latest book, “Exposed, The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products: Who’s at Risk and What’s at Stake for American Power,” examines many of the seminal issues that drive the Ecology Center’s many campaigns to better regulate and phase out the use of toxic chemicals in this country.

Currently, Schapiro is Editorial Director of The Center for Investigative Reporting, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that recruits, funds and promotes good old-fashioned muckraking journalism by independent reporters and producers. As an investigative journalist, the West Coast-based Schapiro has lived and worked in and out of Europe over the last two decades, writing on environmental and international affairs for Harper’s, The Nation, Mother Jones, and The Atlantic Monthly.

In the early 1980s, Schapiro coauthored “Circle of Poison,” which revealed how the U.S. was exporting banned pesticides to developing countries. Twenty-five years later, Schapiro’s “Exposed“ flips that thesis on its head and details how the U.S. is fast becoming a dumping ground for chemicals banned abroad.

His book is an effort to show how American consumers are unwittingly being exposed to chemicals that are prohibited in the European Union because of their health dangers. Toys, electronics, and cosmetics — the very lipsticks, eyeliners and blushers, for example — banned from the shelves of EU stores are now widely available in the United States.

The retreat of the U.S. from a position of world leadership in environmental protection also has dire economic consequences, warns Schapiro. The emergence of the 27-member EU as the world’s largest and most affluent market, combined with their higher standards on toxic chemicals, is pushing the global market toward more sustainable production, while the U.S. continues to fall behind.

What’s so special about the EU and how did they end up the global leader in environmental protection, driving alternative manufacturing practices in China and Korea? And, why does U.S. policy seemingly ignore the data linking the rising rates of cancer, endocrine problems and reproductive disorders to chemical exposure? For answers, you could start by reading our review of “Exposed” in last summer’s newsletter, or by acquiring the book through our e-bookstore. Better yet, come see the author in person and ask him yourself. The answers may surprise you.