Daniel Stone writes about science and history. He also teaches environmental science to graduate students at Johns Hopkins University. Stone, the author of Sinkable and The Food Explorer, often looks for human stories buried in broad environmental issues. This is how he found the inspiration for his latest book, American Poison: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice.
“One day several years ago, I read about Alice Hamilton in a footnote in a book, and I thought, I’m deep in this world and I had never heard of her, and I sort of got obsessed with her and started finding all her old archives,” he says. If you, like Stone, have never heard of Alice Hamilton, she was a trailblazing doctor, a pioneer of industrial medicine, and the first female professor at Harvard. She was also a dedicated public health activist who took on the booming auto industry—and the deadly invention of leaded gasoline, which would poison millions of people across America.
“Her life was so long and her work was so diverse that I struggled to summarize her in a pithy way. I finally started to tell people she was ‘the Erin Brockovich of the 1920s’ even though her career started 20 years before that and lasted 30 more years afterward,” he says.
We spoke with Daniel about American Poison as well as the current state of regulation and environmentalism, plus how U.S. history may provide clues for the future.
Tell FDA: Baby Food Is Not a Place for Lead
Do you call yourself an environmentalist?
I do, but this term kind of bugs me because it’s been so co-opted that it’s lost meaning. I understand there are people who care about climate change and people who don’t, and people who care about endangered species and the ozone layer and people who don’t. But there are tons of smaller issues. Doesn’t everyone care about the air quality in their neighborhood or the contaminants in their water? You can’t raise kids without being at least a little concerned about what you eat or what your city looks like. I think everyone’s an environmentalist to some degree. The difference is in the micro or macro environmental factors we care about, and that’s usually based on our position in the world and the privileges we have.
What’s your current state of mind when it comes to today’s EPA—and regulation of, as you say, American poisons?
Clearly our current governing predicament is not great. But for those people despairing about the hollowing out of our government and environmental infrastructure, I’d say that this is not the first time this has happened. In many ways, it’s a cycle that I describe in my book as an American parable. The 1920s were also an era of incredible innovation with big cultural changes. Lots of people thought the world was changing too fast, and there was a great political struggle, and ultimately the Great Depression.
I’m not saying that’s where we’re headed, but I regretfully have to report sometimes that we’ve had moments before of poor regulation over our environment and natural resources and a flat-footed or nonexistent government dropping the ball on overseeing them. But on the whole, the world is getting better and cleaner, in terms of phasing out seriously bad stuff, and that’s a long-term trend.
Do you think lead could be removed from gasoline today, under this current administration? Why or why not?
I don’t see it being a Trump priority. But there were lots of presidential administrations that either couldn’t or wouldn’t ban it, basically from the 1920s, when it was invented, all the way to the 1970s, when it was finally phased down. And even then, in the 70s, it wasn’t the government that got serious about banning it. It was a new invention, the catalytic converter, that caused its decline.
So maybe the question isn’t whether a president can keep the world clean but whether we can create the right political and economic incentives for companies to innovate solutions to dirty, dangerous, and poisonous problems. When they do, as with leaded gasoline, the government usually follows behind and completes the loop.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
I see in Alice Hamilton someone who proves that hard work, perseverance, and repeating what you know is true really can lead to meaningful change. She didn’t get to see the phasedown of leaded gasoline in her lifetime, but she did get the last word.
Who are your favorite environmental writers?
I love Jon Krakauer, who’s more of a naturalist and adventure writer. I also assign my students Silent Spring by Rachel Carson every semester, a true seminal book of the field. Carl Zimmer and David Quammen are a joy to read. And of course, Bill Bryson and John McPhee. Classic guys whose footsteps we’re all trying to follow.
Which is harder: writing a book or fighting for clean air and a better climate?
Both are hard, but ultimately writing a book is a solo effort. Securing clean natural resources requires building coalitions and fighting against people who disagree with you, often against major economic forces. I think that’s much harder.
What’s one thing you think everyone should know about the way poisons are allowed, removed, or regulated from everyday products in America?
Our regulatory infrastructure in America is not really built for today’s world. Innovation happens fast and changes come quickly. But the government acts slow, and usually our lawmakers are either too old, apathetic, or distracted with other issues to keep track of big changes that probably could use some oversight. I think of advances like microplastics, PFAs, and certain farming pesticides that definitely need more review before they’re essentially tested on the public. But there are tons of others.
And some of today’s poisons aren’t even poisons in the literal sense. I think of social media and its effects on teenagers. All these things I think we’ll look back in 100 years and say, “Wow, that caused a lot of damage, why didn’t anyone try to stop it?”
What does hope for the future mean to you?
I spent a lot of time learning about the life and work of Alice Hamilton. She was a toxicologist, but today, we’d probably refer to her as a specialized environmental scientist. Her life can really be summed up in one word: repetition. She spent more than 60 years inspecting, reporting, writing, and speaking. There were decades when nobody really listened to her, and yet she kept working, producing an enormous amount of journal articles and speeches about poisons that to her didn’t seem that controversial. Ultimately, the things she warned about 100 years ago, like how leaded gas was a dangerous and destructive idea, have come to be accepted as fact. Her story really makes clear that repetition of warnings about the environment eventually does work. I end American Poison with this sentiment that the tide of environmental progress often changes too slowly, but it does change.