Rick Smith

Bruce Lourie

Funny, thought-provoking, and incredibly disturbing, Slow Death by Rubber Duck reveals that just the living of daily life creates a chemical soup inside each of us. Pollution is no longer just about belching smokestacks and ugly sewer pipes - now, it's personal. The most dangerous pollution has always come from commonplace items in our homes and workplaces. Smith and Lourie ingested and inhaled a host of things that surround all of us all the time. This book exposes the extent to which we are poisoned every day of our lives. For this book, over the period of a week - the kind of week that would be familiar to most people - the authors use their own bodies as the reference point and tell the story of pollution in our modern world, the miscreant corporate giants who manufacture the toxins, the weak-kneed government officials who let it happen, and the effects on people and families across the globe. Parents and concerned citizens will have to read this book. Key concerns raised in Slow Death by Rubber Duck: * Flame-retardant chemicals from electronics and household dust polluting our blood. * Toxins in our urine caused by leaching from plastics and run-of-the-mill shampoos, toothpastes and deodorant. * Mercury in our blood from eating tuna. * The chemicals that build up in our body when carpets and upholstery off-gas. Ultimately hopeful, the book empowers readers with some simple ideas for protecting themselves and their families, and changing things for the better. From the Hardcover edition.

How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health

Slow Death by Rubber Duck

There are over 80,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce today, including hormone-disrupting phthalates and air pollutants. Smith and Lourie prove how easily our bodies absorb these chemicals from the foods we eat, the air we breathe, and the products we smear on our skin-- day after day. Then they give us the good news about what is in our control and the steps we can take for reducing our toxic burden. The result is nothing short of a prescription for a healthier life.

getting harmful chemicals out of our bodies and our world

Toxin toxout

A look at the chemicals surrounding us that’s “hard–hitting . . . yet also instills hope for a future in which consumers make safer, more informed choices” (The Washington Post). Pollution is no longer just about belching smokestacks and ugly sewer pipes—now, it’s personal. The most dangerous pollution, it turns out, comes from commonplace items in our homes and workplaces. To prove this point, for one week Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie ingested and inhaled a host of things that surround all of us. Using their own bodies as the reference point to tell the story of pollution in our modern world, they expose the corporate giants who manufacture the toxins, the government officials who let it happen, and the effects on people and families across the globe. This book—the testimony of their experience—also exposes the extent to which we are poisoned every day of our lives, from the simple household dust that is polluting our blood to the toxins in our urine that are created by run–of–the–mill shampoos and toothpaste. Ultimately hopeful, the book empowers readers with some simple ideas for protecting themselves and their families, and changing things for the better. “Undertaking a cheeky experiment in self–contamination, professional Canadian environmentalists Smith and Lourie expose themselves to hazardous everyday substances, then measure the consequences . . . Throughout, the duo weave scientific data and recent political history into an amusing but unnerving narrative, refusing to sugarcoat any of the data while maintaining a welcome sense of humor.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Secret Danger of Everyday Things

The landmark book about the toxicity of everyday life, updated, revised and re-issued for its 10th anniversary, along with the experiments from Smith and Lourie's second book, Toxin Toxout. It's amazing how little can change in a decade. In 2009, a book transformed the way we see our frying pans, thermometers and tuna sandwiches. Daily life was bathing us in countless toxins that accumulated in our tissues, were passed on to our children and damaged our health. To expose the extent of this toxification, environmentalists Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie offered themselves to science and undertook a series of over a dozen experiments to briefly raise their personal levels of mercury, BPA, Teflon and other pollutants. The ease with which ordinary activities caused dangerous levels to build in their bodies was a wake-up call, and readers all over the world responded. But did government regulators and corporations? Ten years later, there is good news. But not much. Concise, shocking, practical and hopeful, this new combined edition of one of the most important books ever published about green living will put the nasty stuff back where it belongs: on the national agenda and out of our bodies.

Bruce Lourie

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