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Poisoning Our Children draws on nearly a half million words of interviews with experts, advocates, and families. Many of these are already published, but it has been a while, so I have decided to republish some of the best ones. The interviews are long, but I have begun each with a brief synopsis of high points. I am deeply grateful to Leyla and to all the many people who made this project a…
We never would have thought anyone could be so stupid or cruel as to spray our children with a toxic pesticide without our knowledge or consent.... One of the biggest blind spots in Public Health is the widespread recommendation for mosquito spraying (adulticiding). Part of the explanation lies, I believe, in the siloing of Infectious Disease apart from Environmental Health. Already, Environmental…
Dr. Susan Buchanan is now retiring. Today, Friday, July 31, is her last day at UIC. Congratulations, Susan! Poisoning Our Children draws on nearly a half million words of interviews with experts, advocates, and families. Many of these are already published, but it has been a while, so I have decided to republish some of the best ones. The interviews are long, but I have begun each with a brief…
I am reading and re-reading the manuscript during copyediting and proofing. I want it to be smooth, compelling, and difficult to put down. One reader called it a “wonderful, terrible book.” And sometimes the road seems to stretch out beyond all endurance. Because while I told myself I was on the homestretch, I now know that finishing this book will only be the beginning. The book is no good at all…
Twenty-Eight Years ago today, my world collapsed when my daughter Katherine was diagnosed with leukemia. The day before, I had insisted on a CBC to discern whether she had anemia or leukemia. It seemed surreal to say those words, yet this doctor, finally, had to agree that her dramatic bruises and constant low-grade fevers were textbook symptoms. I hoped I was just being paranoid. Her pediatrician…
A reporter at E&E News at Politico, Ellie Borst, wonders what is happening with the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC) to the EPA, on which I have been honored to serve over the last three years. She called me asking what I knew, which is not much since we have heard nothing about reappointments, which were due out in March. Although as a strong participant, I would normally…
Our exposure to plastics and the resulting health impacts have been getting much-deserved attention lately. It is difficult to overstate how much plastic in food packaging is contributing to high levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in human bodies – and the effect this has on everyday lives. Children are especially vulnerable, exposed as they are from before conception onwards. Micro- and…
This issue is personal. This book is personal. This blog is personal. Recently, I was talking with Robin Coleman , my editor at Johns Hopkins University Press , about promoting the book , and even though I am a private person, I found myself saying that I would tell my story however painful, that I would plaster billboards all over town with pictures of Katherine dead if it meant that one child…
How painful it is to write these words. It never gets easier, and it never will – as I always knew and as I now see for certain. Katherine and Jean-Marie, Christmas 2001 Some people call sorrow that lasts more than one year “complicated grief” or “ pathological grief. ” I call it the price I pay for loving an extraordinary person extraordinarily much. The intensity of sorrow correlates to the…
I just got off a Zoom call with my editor Robin Coleman at Johns Hopkins UP. He graciously shared a thrilling behind-the-scenes glimpse of how my book is being received by the very first staff at the press besides him to read it. Figure 1: Home of JHUP at 2715 N. Charles St. in Baltimore Robin likes all the books he is working on, naturally. But he told me that usually, he experiences self-doubt –…
Some have asked me if I am happy that Poisoning Our Children is being published by my first-choice publisher in the whole world – Johns Hopkins University Press, the university that was my furthest dream for medical school. It is a difficult question. Having lost Katherine, there is a very low ceiling on happiness or even enjoyment. I have purpose, and that purpose, including my surviving…
As I take a breath this summer, I have been thinking a lot about Ayana Elizabeth’s Johnson’s What If We Get It Right? I am sliding right into the next book project asking a similar question, propelled by the abundant riches of all the interviews I did for Poisoning Our Children . There is more to say than could fit in any one book. One of the most striking parts of Johnson’s book is the Climate…
Read the 2024 ECHO Team’s New Publication at https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s13412-026-01116-w?sharing_token=UyJ3IetY4jfS0hrTdpC8Jfe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6GkdvyH3HrplAYAmjYz76ZqfB5_k038nYPMjEkuNpRBFsWzCbuQmuZhpX_V5N3Qma_h9gDouNs7lcpfPlr4sxNuNKVEjq5Bc-gFO-DQ_i8kI9Lz_pVHQaawX0OS3_QB8I%3D . Perched on the cusp of Cape Cod, the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole routinely welcomes…
I was volunteering at Habitat for Humanity in Michigan with my Scholars last week, when I was asked to submit comments to UNHRC’s Advisory Committee on the Human Rights implications of plastic pollution. This is what I tapped out on my phone amidst a busy flurry of brilliant students and happy chaos. Thanks to student Isabela Alvarado for her quick review. Esteemed committee – I write in my…
A quiet young woman, curly dark hair parted in the middle and pulled back in a bun, sat in the corner of the classroom with her book in front of her and said almost nothing the entire semester. But she was listening. I would like to shine a light on Ebelyn Garcia, my surprising student from Environmental Literature, and my very first guest blogger. In her essay + poem + letter to her parents, she…
Soon enough, early 2027, my book will be out, and a very careful reader might notice that the last added, most recent citation in my book is an article with a daring title published by an audacious organization in one of the very top journals in the world. But the piece is too important to wait until 2027 to be discussed. The article is “ Corporate Vectors of Chronic Disease—Using Internal…
Lanphear and Kimmerer and Collins: To Meld Three Marvelous Minds…. Happy accidents in reading can delight. This week and last, as part of my Environmental Literature course, I have been wending my way again through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass , every environmentalist’s new delight, quickly establishing itself as a tried-and-true classic. If you haven’t read it yet, I cannot recommend…
Last week, I dreamt that I rode my bike to a convenience store with a lottery ticket that I learned was worth at least a million dollars. Once there, at a counter that seemed more like the post office than a convenience store, I began going through my large black messenger bag. I thought I knew right where the ticket was, but when I pulled it out, it was just some receipt – I looked and looked to…
As I finished Poisoning Our Children for JHUP, one comment from the reviewer was to cut down the final chapter on solutions: it was trying to do too much, to pursue too many tangents. I agreed and cut a great deal. I realized I was trying to write my next book, provisionally titled Closing the Circle , parthenogenically born out of this one like Athena out of the head of Zeus. There was so much…
The methodology for my new book emerged from ethnographic research methods. I locate it here for those who are curious and for those who might like to nerd out a bit behind the scenes. The basic bones of my methodology combines ethnographic interviews with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). My primary training is in science and literature, or in other words, storytelling, but this…
Here is the Toolkit for the book -- located online for easy access and updating! Top Ten Ways to Help Protect Your Children from Cancer, Autism, ADHD, and Lower IQs from Environmental Exposures The American Academy of Pediatrics has determined that we can help prevent disease and disability in children by limiting their exposure to pesticides and other chemicals found in everyday life. Here are…
