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Exposing the Body Toxic
CHE Partner Nena Baker

CHE Partner Nena Baker, author of The Body Toxic, has always believed that journalists can make change. In high school, she felt inspired by what she had read about the Pentagon Papers and the work of Woodward and Bernstein. As an adult, when she felt ready to write her first book, she again drew her inspiration from reading.

She had come out of a background of investigative newspaper reporting, mainly focused on politics and business. She wanted to find a topic for a current-affairs book that would allow her to “work in righting a wrong.”

That wrong to “write” emerged when she read a short article in the New York Times about the Centers for Disease Control’s biomonitoring program.

“It opened my eyes,” she said in a recent phone interview, “that there was this data being collected that humans were being polluted with commonly-used chemicals. It reframed how I thought about pollution in a very visceral way.”

“Going to College All Over Again”
Baker hadn't been a science or environmental reporter, but she was fascinated by the topic and started to dig around to answer some of the broader questions, including, as she put it, “How is it that we have a regulatory structure that allows us to be contaminated with these products? Should we be concerned?”

She thought it would take her about two years to write The Body Toxic.

“I was used to working under deadlines,” she explained. “But, quite frankly, because I didn’t have the science background, it took me longer to feel like I understood it enough to write about it authoritatively, and in a way that other lay people could understand.”

It took her three and a half years.

“It was kind of like going to college all over again,” she said. The Body Toxic was published by North Point Press in August 2008.

She discovered CHE early on in the research process.

“It was a valuable resource,” she said. “And good to know there were other people out there who were concerned and working to get out critical information.”

Three things she learned were particularly powerful.

“A lot of things were surprising. For example, that some of these common chemicals never, ever break down in the environment. Quite honestly, though, the most shocking and disturbing thing was this assumption – I thought of myself as a fairly well-informed individual. But I found I had assumed there was some level of scrutiny and protection at regulatory agencies that absolutely does not exist. The FDA, the EPA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, all the places we look to for safety information… when you dig below the surface, you see they have little to no information.”

“Also, I found it very sad that we seem to be repeating the same mistakes that we made thirty years ago – allowing a chemical to become pervasive in our environment and then starting to understand that maybe it’s not good for people. How many times does that need to happen before we find a different approach?”
 
“We Can Do Better Than This – and We Have To”
“I have a whole different outlook today than I did four years ago, when I first started this project,” Baker said. “It was not a good time for science. Now, though, as more information has come out, more studies about the toxic effects of a number of these common pollutants, as the epidemiological work begins to coalesce, I feel much better.”

“When Lisa Jackson talks about toxic chemicals as being among her priorities for reform at the EPA, that gives me great hope. When President Obama's transition team was eager to meet with people who share the same concerns I do about toxic chemicals in consumer products, that gives me hope. Green chemistry is really gaining the foothold that it needs to help drive those changes, in science, in academia, in commerce. I do have hope.”

The attention her book has been getting reflects the growing public interest in this problem. The Body Toxic was favorably reviewed in the Washington Post, E - The Environmental Magazine, and mentioned in O, the Oprah Magazine and many other media outlets.

"There’s a lot of interest in the topic,” she said. “People often thank me. They’re really hungry for information – they’re aware that it's impossible to shop your way out of this. There is a willingness to tackle the problem.”

That said, Baker concedes that the problem of body-polluting chemicals is daunting at best.

“It's easy to say, ‘What can I possibly do about it?’ But if you step back and try not to be too alarmist, you can say, ‘We can do better than this – and we have to.’ You have to approach it calmly and rationally. You have to take it step by step.”

Baker is now “pulling at threads” for a second book that would build upon The Body Toxic (which is scheduled to come out in paperback in summer 2009).

“I’m looking at doing a more forward-looking, solutions-based book, incorporating green chemistry and new legislation, and encouraging people to think about making a shift as consumers and as a society. You do what you can do to minimize individual exposures, but we're going to have to make changes that affect all of us.”

By Shelby Gonzalez, CHE Administrative Coordinator