From lipstick to burgers: how our lives have become so chemical dependent

The start of the suburban sprawl changed the US into a nation of voracious consumers, and the chemical industry responded by creating products to meet those demandsRead our entire Toxic America seriesMy students sometimes ask me why in the United States there are cancer-causing ingredients in their cosmetics, or neurotoxins in their mattresses. Or hormone disruptors, and prescription drugs, in their drinking water.I always answer by chalking out a map of the country, and its grid of 48,000 miles of interstate highways that were constructed after the second world war. The roads were initially conceived as a defense against foreign invasion, I tell them. But the unintended consequences include a host of major environmental and health problems we are only now beginning to understand, from climate change and species extinction to cancer. Continue reading...