A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind

by Harriet A. Washington

The United States has approved 60,000 chemicals for industrial uses that expose Americans in the workplace, in fence-line communities, and in company towns, and that poison us by leaching into our water and air. Regulations do not require companies to test the effects of such chemicals on humans prior to using them, and they don’t. We typically learn of health hazards only after people are exposed to them, and because environmental pollution exposes victims to a mixture of untested substances, teasing out and accurately characterizing the effects of any one chemical can be difficult. Moreover, many pollution-caused illnesses, such as lung cancer or mesothelioma, can take years or decades to appear, making them difficult to connect to a given chemical exposure. But some nations, like those of the European Union, test industrial chemicals differently, before they are used. So should we. Rather than collecting, analyzing, and haggling over the sufficiency of data about a chemical’s relative safety after allegations of harm are made, the safety of any potentially toxic substance should be demonstrated before it is marketed and used.