That new-car smell!
<p>Buy <em><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9844/9844.intro.html">Deceit and Denial, the Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution</a></em> by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner.</p><p><img height="62" hspace="5" src="http://turing.plymouth.edu/~estiller/blog/uploads/hairspray.serendipityThumb.jpg" width="110" align="left" border="0" />According to <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=wiener">Jon Wiener</a> in his Nation article, the chemical industry is launching a campaign to discredit the authors of this book that chronicles the history of said industry covering up health risks associated its products, like tetraethyl lead and vinyl chloride. The chemical, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20000320&c=1&s=kitman">tetraethyl lead</a> ,was introduced into gasoline to create leaded gas, despite numerous lead poisonings by workers exposed to it. Although <a href="http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/dirtysecrets/vinyl/1.asp">vinyl chloride</a> was known to be a potent carcinogen, it was used as an aerosol propellant in products like hairspray until 1974. Industry is still releasing 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride into the atmosphere every year by using it to create PVC pipes and car upholstery. According to the EPA, <a href="http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/vinylchl.html">"Air inside new cars may contain vinyl chloride at higher levels than detected in ambient air because vinyl chloride may outgas into the air from the new plastic parts".</a></p><p /><p>I can still picture the cigarette industry CEOs sitting at a table during Senate hearings on the health risks of tobacco, claiming one after the other (without so much as a smirk) that there were no known health risks associated with their products.</p>