To Clif, I HEART Our Stolen Future. I keep a stack of them and give them away to guests at my green B&B. I learned so much from that book. Everyone should read it. In January Dr. Colborn made a five-minute video for YouTube about E. D. in which she said that endocrine disruptors will get us before global warming does. Really worthwhile. You can probably Google it.

Great credit needs to be given to Dianne Dumanoski, the writer who teamed up with researchers Colborn and Myers to produce this very readable warning to all of us. Research information can easily bog a reader down but this book keeps moving with revelation after revelation. I kept running to my PC to check for later information on the studies covered in this book (written in 1997) and I found nothing to refute the central claim that we are “flying blind” by releasing thousands of chemical formulations annually without knowing what the results will be in the wild.

Once released, many chemicals have very long lives and several accumulate in our bodies to be handed on through a mother’s milk to the next generation, with a likelihood that fetal development is affected and with it the future…a future that is being stolen in this way.

The reader is never left confused. The book starts with a clear and simple explanation of the power of hormones and the way they work within our bodies (and those of other animals). Then we move through accounts of troubles in the natural world and the link they may have with hormone disruption either by enhancement or blocking. No wild claims are made, instead a case is made with reasonable hypotheses given in each instance as we move through what the cover rightly says is a scientific detective story.

Ignorance can hurt us and humanity has a track record of ignorance resulting in damage (think CFC’s, lead, DDT, Thalidomide). Profit is a powerful incentive to minimize risks and the chemical industry is a very very big business so we must be extremely vigilant for our own good. This book provides a public service to us all.

(Note to California and New York: only WE are allowed to call ourselves the great fly-over — YOU are likely to have your nose bloodied)

And now, reading the bill, I wonder how they thought the language of that pamphlet would work. Geez.

I do live in Ca and I did see this flyer and I thought it was mighty suspicious. I’m glad to find out about it here and I will contact my representative.

Lisa

The really annoying part for me is that they’re not banning products, as the flyer would lead you to believe. They’re banning packaging types, so the companies are more than able to substitute other packagings. I hate it when big business lies to the public, assuming we’re stupid enough not to figure it out.