Biologist, poet, and winner of the Rachel Carson Leadership Award from Chatham College, Sandra Steingraber is convinced that environmental devastation is the moral crisis of our time. She believes that parents must safeguard their children's healthy development and become more vigilant about the toxins present in the food we eat, the homes we live in, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Kids are more vulnerable to the environments they inhabit. With great bravado and a firm grasp of ecology and biology, Steingraber runs down all the challenges she and her two children, Elijah and Faith, face in the toxic environment of upstate New York over a six-year period.
Here are some of the hazards she writes about: the arsenic in the pressure-treated wood used on decks in homes and nursery school playgrounds; the 94% of non-organic strawberries in the store having large residues of pesticide in them; the presence of herbicides in the water; the one in eleven children who suffer from asthma, the most chronic childhood disease aggravated by air pollution; the large hydrocarbon emissions in yards from riding mowers; and the contamination of groundwater from fracking.
Steingraber makes it clear that more regulation of corporations is necessary along with citizen activism. She includes four pages about organizations that are working hard to create a better future for the children of today and tomorrow.
