FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE.CA
 
Co-authors Rick Smith (Executive Director of Environmental Defence) and Bruce Lourie have been touring the U.S. If you’ll be in New York City on March 9, you can hear them read from the book at Borders at 7pm. And, if you haven’t picked up a copy of the book yet, you can get yours from Environmental Defence, and support our work at the same time.

Here you can find information about “how the toxic chemistry of everyday life affects our health.” 

           Please feel free to explore the site!              

          On this site you can:     

   - Explore videos of the authors and get an overview of the book

- Learn a unique way to detox

- Explore  illustrated quotes

- Feel free to leave comments/Questions

- Listen to the “Rubber Ducky” song from Sesame Street!

ENJOY!!

• Is your shampoo giving you more than silky, shiny hair?

• Did you know that some germs are healthier than antibacterial soap?

• Have you ever thought twice about using a rubber ducky in your bath?

Chemicals are everywhere and we often don’t realise how very exposed we are to their danger. We brush our teeth in the morning with phthalate-coated toothpaste and go to bed at night on mattresses treated with bromated flame-retardants.

Living in a ‘toxic soup’

In Slow Death by Rubber Duck, authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie show how, “…the living of daily life creates a toxic soup inside each of us.”
In this book you’ll discover how chemicals found in products that you use every day can leach into your body and make you very sick. You will question why toxic substances are allowed to be in these products at all, and wonder why our government isn’t doing anything about it. You will also get a quick history lesson about our germ-obsessed culture and how we evolved to be the society we are today. And you won’t want to put this book down.

Authors experimented on themselves

What makes Slow Death by Rubber Duck especially interesting is that Smith and Lourie obtain a lot of their evidence by experimenting on themselves and their own exposure to seven toxic chemicals found in everyday products.  They followed one rule— to take part in normal activities (not eat mercury on their mashed potato or phthalates on their cereal.) They checked their blood levels at various points to see whether their levels of the chemicals had increased. The results are both fascinating and horrifying:

“In [Rick’s] final blood test, the morning after [his] tuna steak dinner on day 3, [his] mercury blood levels reached 8.63 u/L. After seven meals/snacks in three day, [he] had managed to more than double the mercury level in [his] blood! Not only did [the experiment] reveal high levels of mercury in several sources of tuna, but it also demonstrated how easy it is to spike mercury levels by eating a few sandwiches and a couple of tuna dinners! When [Rick] read the results, [he] realized how communities that depend on fish in their diets can quietly poison themselves.”

Serious topic, entertaining read

The subject matter is deadly serious, but Slow Death by Rubber Duck is an engaging and entertaining read. The tone is witty and conversational.  The authors are insightful , the language is clever, and there are excellent graphs and images in each chapter to help to make the information easy to grasp. Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie help the readers to take their frustration and anger and turn it into political advocacy on behalf of our bodies and our communities. Bellow is an example of the tone.

“…we’ve unwittingly welcomed these toxins into our homes in countless ways. In a particularly graphic example, it’s been estimated that by the time the average woman grabs her morning coffee, she has applied 126 different chemicals in 12 different products to her face, body and hair. And the result? Not surprisingly, a large and growing body of scientific research links exposure to toxic chemicals to many ailments that plague people, including several forms of cancer, reproductive problems and birth defects, respiratory illnesses such as asthma and neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  We have all become guinea pigs in a vast and uncontrolled experiment. At this moment in history, the image conjured up by the word “pollution” is just as properly an innocent rubber duck as it is a giant smoke stack.”

 The authors may be male, but the target audience for this book is women, aged 30 and over, especially parents of young children who care about the impact of chemicals on health.  The information in this book will kick their maternal instincts into overdrive. The authors further demonstrate the audience by using references to events from the 80’s and 90’s. They discuss several T. V. shows and celebrities from that time.  

This book will make you realize how important it is for our society to be aware of  chemicals in our products and to try and get the government to do something about it. I recommend this book for anyone interested in health, current affairs and the environment.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck is a must read.  You’ll never look at a rubber duck the same way again!

Check out this great song from Sesame Street !!