Recently I read McKay Jenkins's What's Gotten Into Us?. The book, like many others in recent years, attempted to catalog the ways in which we've invisibly transformed our lived environment over the last several decades to incorporate all sorts of synthetic compounds, many of which stick around for decades more, many of which are extremely toxic to animals, both humans and non-humans alike, and many of which accumulate in our bodies, in our waterways, and in our land.
What differentiates Jenkins's take from books like High-Tech Trash is that the things Jenkins describes aren't waste products (e.g., junk left over from manufacturing or using something) and aren't side effects (e.g., the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning). These toxins are by and large the things we want in the first place. Pesticides. Perfumes. Preservatives. Flame retardants.
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