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The world is awash in chemicals created by fellow citizens, but we know little to nothing about them. Understanding whether even the most prevalent ones are toxic would take decades. Many people have tragically suffered serious diseases and premature death, including children during development. Why has this occurred?
Many factors contribute, but two important ones are the laws permitting this and the manner in which science has been used to identify and assess whether or not products are toxic. Both are the outcome of legislative, corporate, and judicial choices.
Congress created laws that in fact keep public health officials and the wider population in the dark about the toxicity of virtually all substances other than prescription drugs and pesticides. Facing considerable ignorance about toxic substances, impartially motivated scientists seeking to protect the public health are constrained by the natural pace of studies to reveal toxic effects. Corporate pressures on public health officials and scientific obstruction substantially heighten the barriers to protecting the public.
When people have suffered serious as well as life-threatening diseases likely traceable to toxic substances, judicial errors barring relevant science in the personal injury (tort) law can and have frustrated redress of injustices. Under both public health law and the tort law, there are possibilities for improved approaches, provided public leaders make different and better choices. Tragic Failures describes these issues and suggests how we could be better protected from myriad toxic substances in our midst.
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Industrial Chemicals as Nuisances: The Rise of Environmental Health Laws and Their Limitations
Chapter 2: Cancers, Brain Disorders, and the Feminization of Boys: Can We Avoid Poisoning Our Children? . .
Chapter 3: How Do Obscure Supreme Court Decisions Affect Me?
Chapter 4: How Demands for Ideal Science Undermine the Public's Health
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, and Faculty member of the Environmental Toxicology Graduate Group, University of California Riverside. Author of Regulating Toxic Substances (OUP 1993), Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants (Harvard 2013), Toxic Torts: Science, Law and the Possibility of Justice (CUP 2006)
"Dr. Carl Cranor has to be the foremost legal thinker with the deepest understanding of the system that, far too often, makes many people sick and results in premature death. Illness and death could have been, as shown by Dr. Cranor, almost entirely preventable if only decision-makers had chosen to serve the public interest rather than the interests of the manufacturers of hazardous products. In Tragic Failures, Dr. Cranor shines a light on mechanisms of malfeasance that have long been systemic in the USA and its trans-national conglomerates. With these mechanisms now revealed in this, the latest of his books, the goalposts are made evident for those wishing to rectify what are truly tragic failures in our attempts at good governance."
– Colin L. Soskolne, Professor emeritus, University of Alberta, Canada
"An important and timely book. Tragic Failures reminds us of the moral importance of societal decisions about how science is used (and can be abused) in efforts to protect the public's helath."
– Christina Ruden, Professor in Regulatory Toxicology, Stockholme University
"Cranor masterfully integrates insights from science, law, and ethics in order to identify major social problems and propose concrete steps that can be taken to fix them."
– Kevin C. Elliott, author of Is A Little Pollution Good for You? Incorporating Societal Values in Environmental Research (OUP 2011)
"Carl F. Cranor has written an authoritative book of exquisite clarity that explains why American environmental laws and its tort system neither protects its citizens nor offers a path to justice for those injured by untested or poorly tested chemicals. The book should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand why it takes a quarter of a century to withdraw a toxic chemical from the marketplace, but months to get it approved."
– Sheldon Krimsky,Tufts University, author of Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific & Social Origins of The Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis
