Alan Bell was a drug-busting attorney in the days of Miami Vice. Along with police, he'd carry out raids on the bad guys. Then he took a shiny new job in a shiny new building and promptly got seriously ill. Sick building disease” wasn't in his life plan, but he ended up having to leave his glamorous life, flee Florida for Arizona, and live in a specially designed dwelling that minimized his exposure to toxins. There he put the shrewd aggressiveness of his Vice-busting life to work, researching the poisonous things in the environment which had made him ill.
At one point he organized a conference endorsed by Al Gore. Too ill to attend, he sent his eight-year-old daughter. She ran around in the wings and made friends with the speakers, and asked them if they could make her father better. Soon one of the people she'd befriended called Alan about a cutting-edge new drug, which gave him enough relief to play with his daughter again. Now he devotes his life to protecting the environment and uncovering fascinating, disquieting information about how materialin the environment can literally poison us like the fact that (according to Heckenlively over the phone) the FDA is shockingly lax about the safety of the non-edible products all around us (paint, cosmetics).
Author Kent Heckenlively, a science teacher, interviews 50 people who, like Alan Bell, have been effected by environmental toxicity, whether as scientists, attorneys, or victims. Along the way, readers learn how to protect their families from the chemicals in the indoor and outdoor environment and in everyday products like house paint and lipstick. Readers will learn to spot the signs and symptoms of poisoning” even if it's not as extreme as Bell's, and learn ways to protect themselves.
