Silent Winter

Book excerpt: Silent Winter is about the silent spread of toxic chemicals in our daily lives and their role in the growing prevalence of illnesses such as cancer, chronic fatigue, diabetes, asthma digestive issues, depression, dementia, and others. The scientific evidence about chronic illness and toxic chemicals is withheld from us through stunningly elaborate efforts so that business can continue as usual. Approximately 45% of the adult US population now has at least one chronic illness, and chronic illness is commonly caused by chronic exposure to toxic chemicals. We are often told that these diseases are a result of our lifestyle or our genes. We rarely hear that chronic illness is on the rise as a result of toxic chemicals in consumer products and throughout our environment. Industry does not want to change, so it is forcing us to change on an evolutionary level to deal with the onslaught of chemicals in our daily lives. When we cannot keep up and get ill, we are sold chemical solutions to make us feel better. But individuals and families dealing with chronic illness often know or suspect that toxic chemicals have played a role in the demise of their health. The author also shows how the problem is covered up at a societal level by obscuring what we know, and how discussion of possible solutions is silenced by manipulating the marketplace. Millions of human lives are being muted as a result of chronic illness. Finally, the author discusses our way out of this mess. In the 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson dedicated one short chapter to the anticipated human health impacts from toxic chemicals. That chapter seeded the present work, Silent Winter, which was written after sixty additional years of scientific research and widespread human exposure to a variety of toxic chemicals. In Our Stolen Future, 1996, Theo Colborn et al. warned of the potential dangers of hormone disrupting chemicals on human health. Nearly another 25 years have passed since that writing. Silent Winter reveals the observed impacts of these hormone disrupting chemicals on human health.