Our Children’s Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides by John Wargo

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 175 and business that evolved around the question of radio,” he argues, “was more a kind of tense fusion of interests and perspectives than it was one of a fundamental struggle between the opposite forces of public and private interest” (p. 84). Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover’s associational activities during the 1920s continued this cor­ porate-government cooperation in the development of commercial broadcasting. Streeter also stresses the important role of technical experts and technocratic values in helping to smooth over the contradictions of corporate liberalism. In the case of broadcasting, government deci­ sions that favored corporate control were often legitimated by refer­ ence to the technical complexities of engineering evaluation. By in­ terpreting the public interest in technocratic terms, government regulators, especially during the 1920s, were able to avoid divisive debate and maintain a corporate-government alliance. The second part ofthe book uses social science analyses to critique corporate liberal broadcast policy. Streeter’s main goal is to demon­ strate the political nature of markets, private property, and other liberal values. For instance, he uses ideas from economic sociology to show that markets depend on political intervention for their exis­ tence. By demonstrating the “political character oflaw, markets, and property,” the author hopes to open up discussion ofbroadcast pol­ icy to democratic debate (p. xvi). Some readers undoubtedly will disagree with aspects of the author’s arguments or his general point of view. Many of the key ideas in his historical discussion are not new, but Streeter’s book goes much further than most monographs in using sophisticated frameworks to tease out the analytical implica­ tions of historical issues. Hugh Richard Slotten Dr. Slotten is visiting assistant professor at George Mason University. He is cur­ rently completing a book on the history of radio and television broadcasting and public policy in the United States. Two of his articles on the subject have been published by Technology and Culture. Our Children’s Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Usfrom Pesticides. ByJohn Wargo. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp· xvi+380; illustrations, figures, tables, notes, index. $30.00 (hardcover). In the mid-1980s, John Wargo served as an adviser to a National Academy of Sciences committee charged with evaluating the effec­ tiveness offederal law in controlling cancer risks from pesticide resi­ dues, and this volume appears to draw heavily from that experience. According to Wargo, the regulatory strategy that has emerged over the last several decades is a safety net with numerous holes—holes 176 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE through which children easily fall. In developing his argument, he first places the fight against disease-carrying and crop-destroying pests in historical context, starting with efforts to fight malaria dur­ ing the construction of the Panama Canal and continuing with the successful application ofDDT during World War II. He then outlines how a patchwork of laws and regulations aimed at limiting human exposure to pesticides emerged, giving rise to various—and often questionable—methods of setting tolerances, quantifying risk, and monitoring compliance. In one sense, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy is a summary ofwhat hap­ pened before Rachel Carson first sounded the pesticide alarm over three decades ago and an analysis of what has happened since. But such a description of the book is too simple, because Wargo does not organize his work around Silent Spring. Rather, he is more con­ cerned with analyzing how a fractured set of laws has shaped regula­ tory science by asking and expecting answers to questions narrowly focused on information necessary for the regulatory process. By the time Carson publicized the dangers of biocides, the Federal Insecti­ cide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) of 1947 already re­ quired that manufacturers register pesticides for specific uses. Al­ though this act required manufacturers to do little more than label their products with instructions as to proper use, the required regis­ tration process established a framework that future policy makers took for granted. According to Wargo, this approach has resulted in thousands of separate regulations tied to specific pesticides and food items, as well as an agenda of narrowly focused research and technical debate. Wargo also attempts...