Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health

The U.S. government says industrial and agricultural toxins cause at least 10 percent of cancer deaths - 60,000 of 600,000 annually in the United States - and environmentalists put the figure even higher. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control say avoidable U.S. pollution annually costs citizens $13 billion from asthma, $351 billion from cardiovascular disease, and $240 billion from occupational disease and injury.
Why is government not protecting people? In this compelling, disturbing, yet highly readable book, Shrader-Frechette shows how campaign contributions, lobbyists and their control of media, advertisements, and PR can all conspire to manipulate scientific information, withhold data, cover-up pollution-related disease and death, and "capture" regulators. The result is often the best science, politicians, and policy - that money can buy.
Warning against scapegoating any groups, Shrader-Frechette puts the blame - and the solution - squarely on the shoulders of ordinary citizens. She shows how and why virtually everyone in a democracy has justice-based duties to help prevent avoidable, environment-related deaths.

Kristin Shrader-Frechette is O'Neill Family Endowed Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.