American Poison is a great historical look at one women and her crusade for justice and protection of health for Americans as well as the lengths she would go to save people.

The titular woman who battled for environmental justice is the heroic Alice Hamilton, who for decades in the 20th century fought companies who thought nothing of poisoning their own workers, and also the rest of us, if it meant a healthy bottom line. Hamilton also dealt with routine male condescension and sexism. Oh, and the polluting companies also lied, bullied, and sued anyone who tried to stop them.

Hamilton is a person who did great work and seemed almost completely unburdened by the urge for personal advancement or even recognition. She worked tirelessly for admirable ends and seemed to have no colorful bad habits. So, sorry, but: she’s really not so interesting to read about. What this book needed to be more compelling is a very conceited, really awful, completely disgraceful villain. Luckily, it has one.

His name is Thomas Midgley.

When the 20th century ended, so, I once thought, had the competition for worst human being in that century also concluded, with the usual big names (Hitler, Stalin, etc.) in the top slots. However, recently, I perceive, the contest has reopened as the full consequences of the actions of Thomas Midgley become clearer.

To relieve any suspense you may be feeling at this moment, I will now clearly state the reason that Midgley, a mechanical engineer by training, has acquired infamy now, sixty years after his death. It is because he is responsible for the development of leaded gasoline (covered extensively in this book) and Chlorofluorocarbons (mentioned but not a major part of the narrative). Their use is now banned due to the negative effects on, respectively, human health and the environment.

Actually, the development of these noxious substances is not the worst part of the Midgley legacy. Anyone can make colossal mistakes and it was difficult to predict the long term effects of any activity at the outset. The really evil part is the full-throated participation by Midgley and allies in the legal counter-attacks, spin-doctoring, and public-relations blitzes that plagued the lives of the experts who correctly predicted the dire evil consequences of exposure to Midgley’s inventions, often long after reasonable people had ceased to have any doubt about the harm that was being done.

I recommend this book for its well-researched and almost gleeful recounting of the awfulness of Midgley and his allies, but if you want to learn more immediately, there are two excellent essays on the internet on this same topic, by science writer Steven Johnson, author of Ghost Map and other works. Find Johnson's article from the New York Times here

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/magazine/cfcs-inventor.html

(if you are not thwarted by the NYT's paywall) and a related (and complete unpaywalled) article from Johnson’s Substack here

https://adjacentpossible.substack.com/p/the-man-who-broke-the-world

Perhaps the renewed enthusiasm for vilifying Midgley’s memory is due to the fact that last year (2023) was the 100th anniversary of the widespread introduction of leaded gasoline into the environment (as an answer to the problem of “engine knock”). No matter the reason for the renewed interest, not only is Midgley the target of opprobrium now on new and legacy media, but there apparently is “a new tragedy meets dark comedy film” in development about the life and works of Midgley by a writer and producer responsible for the TV series “Boardwalk Empire” and the film “The Wolf of Wall Street”, working together with Leonardo DiCaprio's film production company Appian Way Productions.

Read an article about the possible film bio of Midgley here

https://www.darkhorizons.com/thomas-midgley-tragicomedy-film-planned/

I apologize for dwelling so much on Midgley in a book which wants very badly to highlight the tireless and often thankless efforts of Alice Hamiltion and allies to make the world a liveable place for the rest of us.

It's just that – as anyone who had to read “Paradise Lost” in school knows – sometimes the Devil is the best character.

I received a free electronic copy of this book in advance of publication for review. Thanks to publisher Penguin Random House and Netgalley for making this possible.

A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.

This is a must read for everyone. American Poison tells the history behind leaded gasoline and a century long battle get it off the market. Potentially one of the most destructive inventions and has long term impacts to every living organism, read American Poison to understand how corporate greed poisoned the world. As the intro says, this is a story about Alice Hamilton, a woman in the 1920s (and beyond) who defined a new era of environmentalism, then called public health and safety. Basically, Alice saw dangers to the world and humans, and fought to create safety measures and stop as much of the dangerous behavior as possible. This is just one of her many crusades.

"...her desire to protect workers was somehow at odds with the pillars of capitalism..."

Today we take for granted that the fuel we use does not contain the dangerous, and deadly, element lead. It has long been known to be a health hazard, however, in the early part of the 21st century, modernization was booming, particularly with science and technology, and those with capability did not always invent with responsibility or honesty. Enter the automobile. Certainly a world changing invention that today, in 2024, we could not conceive of not having a motorized mode of transportation. But when, in 1886, "the world's first automobile, known as the Benz Patent-Motorwagen...from Germany..." was introduced, "it symbolized progress and the dawn of something new." "They promised freedom and adventure...[and] within a few years, automobiles clogged the roadways...followed by a thick cloud of exhaust."

Cars, automobiles, required certain things to run, like gasoline. "Gasoline didn't appear until 1865, the same year the Civil War ended..." and was first used to "provide light in large buildings...for which kerosene wasn't powerful enough." When automobiles were first invented, "gasoline grew in popularity since it had enough force to power an engine. "One company had come to dominate the making of all petroleum products...that company was named Standard Oil..." now known as Exxon Mobile. But, there was a problem with gasoline and automobile engines - when consumers wanted more speed from their cars, and push them to their limits, there would be a "loud clanging sound," and thus the "problem of inefficient fuel detonation [was] an urgent [problem] to solve. This problem became known as engine knock, and is what started one inventor on the course to prevent it.

Over the years, various people did studies and experiments to solve this but one man, Thomas Midgely, was able to bring his/i> solution to the market first. The details of how are long and complicated, but in short, adding a small amount of lead to gasoline stopped the knocking, and it was a very cheap solution which would make people like Thomas beyond rich, and cause the death of untold numbers of people, the effects of which are still around today.

Alice Hamilton, a rare woman doctor in the 1920s, was a pioneer and was able to study the impacts of lead to those who worked with it in factories. By the 1920s, lead (known dangerous but how much was too much sill not understood at the time) was used to make a lot of things and factory workers were falling ill. Hamilton used her knowledge and took advantage of being a woman to negotiate her way into factories to study their conditions, and speak to the workers. Alice Hamilton long knew of the dangers lead presented, and when she learned, along with dozens of other scientists, about lead being used in gasoline, they wrote to the Surgeon General at that time to warn of the dangers.

After years long battle, and studies not able to be fully implemented to tell the truth behind the long-term impacts of lead in gasoline, the companies behind its creation and distribution, General Motors, Dupont, and Standard Oil (now Exxon), won. They won for profits over human safety, which they failed to see was also going to hurt them and their families. Leaded gasoline did not discriminate - it's exhaust carried and stayed in the air.

Alice Hamilton died in 1970, and did not live long enough to see the end of leaded gasoline. The story is too complex and I'm not going to write a full-on book report. If the facts haven't enticed you to read this, maybe the next set of facts will.

"In the summer of 1971, Needleman started to collect baby teeth from first and second graders in Philadelphia." "[He] found exactly what he predicted. Many of the kids had been exposed to low or even moderate amounts of lead almost their entire lives. This was stunning. But for it to mean anything, he wanted to find out if the lead in each child somehow influenced their behavior. Needleman had the idea to enlist teachers. He asked them to fill out questionnaires about each of their students. They were simple yes/ no questions: Is the child distractible? Are they disorganized? Are they hyperactive or impulsive? The teachers didn’t know which students were in the study, nor did they know any student’s tooth lead levels. But their responses revealed a strong correlation. As tooth lead went up, so did the number of bad reports. Children with the highest levels had the most trouble paying attention and were slowest to learn to read. Needleman gave IQ tests to all of the students and, almost uniformly, the higher the lead in their teeth, the lower their scores. Needleman published his findings in 1979 in the New England Journal of Medicine. He knew it would be controversial. But he also had a thick skin and a general conviction against injustice, however small. And the data suggested this was bigger than a small injustice."

"As time went on, Needleman’s tidy correlations inspired more researchers to dig into an area almost guaranteed to produce striking discoveries. One by one, each new study zeroed in on the same source of lead responsible for the most damaging effects on public health—not paint, not pipes, but gasoline."

"...environmental health scientist at Columbia found that when children are exposed to lead dust in their early years, they become like a delayed train, arriving later and later to future developmental milestones."

"As a neurotoxin, lead was well-known among doctors for the way it killed gray matter in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that regulates emotion, impulse control, and moral judgment. In places with a high consumption of leaded gasoline, Needleman and other scientists were startled to discover higher rates of high school dropouts and teen pregnancies. What this meant for society at large wasn’t clear at the time. It would take years for children born in the early 1970s, at the peak of leaded gasoline consumption, to be adults in the 1990s."

"But then, in 1990, something unexpected started happening. Almost overnight, crime rates across America appeared to reach a peak, and then, rather quickly, they dropped."

"... like a camel’s hump...consumption of leaded gasoline... rose in the 1940s and 1950s, peaked in the 1970s, and then declined... violent crime was the exact same [camel’s hump]," just "twenty years delayed."

"In 2002, the United Nations Environment Programme launched an initiative to eliminate leaded gasoline worldwide. More than forty countries still used it at the time, including almost every country in Africa...In 2021...Algeria was the last country to phase it out."

"If one person or one company can cause so much harm for their own personal gain, then the opposite is also true. A single person who’s prepared and perseverant can create considerable progress for the good of others."

Modern day scientists were surprised that Alice Hamilton and other scientists in the 1920's warned of the impact leaded gasoline would have on the world, that it was dangerous and would kill people.

I highly recommend this book and I clearly didn't talk about every aspect, just gave some of the highlights. If you want to learn the whole story, and how powerful people and companies were able successfully lie and end up making billions of dollars off the deaths workers and consumers, and not caring about the human suffering, read this book.

5 stars.

Thank you, Dutton, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished American Poison: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice, by Daniel Stone.

This book will be released on February 18, 2025.

This is the story of Alice Hamilton, who was an early 20th century doctor and public health advocate who became the first female professor at Harvard. She spent decades investigating factories and mines, studying the terrible effects of lead.

Hamilton had determined how breathing lead at approximately the time that General Motors had determined that they could make millions more by selling leaded gasoline. But, what really attracted attention to the dangers of lead was an incidents in a factory in New Jersey in October 1924. The proximity to New York, then just like now, the media capital of the world, ensured that it got a lot of attention.

The book then chronicles how corporate greed and caring only about profits, once again ended up winning against the interests of people. The book showed how the company then launched its successful offensive against science.

I give this book an A. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on September 8, 2024.