A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind

In her eye-opening book A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind, National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Harriet A. Washington (Medical Apartheid) argues that intelligence isn't an inherited trait. On the contrary, she writes, IQ is influenced by an array of environmental factors, including exposure to air pollution and toxic waste. And, unfortunately, communities of color are disproportionately exposed to such contaminants. This is what Washington calls "environmental racism"--the combination of institutional factors that has relegated people of color to living and working in heavily polluted areas.

In each chapter, Washington draws from journal articles and case studies to show how pollutants are affecting the brains of marginalized people. Among the most unsettling revelations is the story of how Johns Hopkins University's Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) convinced several Baltimore landlords in the 1990s to rent their lead-tainted housing to African American families. KKI offered to "facilitate the landlords' financing for partial lead abatement" only if they agreed to rent to parents with young children. The institute's goal was to measure the effects of lead on the developing human brain, and the results were tragic: several children developed irreversible brain damage from exposure to the toxic heavy metal. A class-action suit was filed in 2011, but as of 2019, no decision has been made on the case. Deeply researched, well written and timelier than ever, A Terrible Thing to Waste will necessarily transform public and scientific debates over urban decay, environmental policy and reported racial differences in IQ. --Amy Brady, freelance writer and editor

Powered by: Xtenit