Global Dumping Ground: The International Traffic in Hazardous Waste - Softcover

As Jessica Mitford's cover blurb points out, this book is almost literally an exercise in muckraking. The Center for Investigative Reporting has roamed the world in search of America's toxic muck and raked it up by the ton in Canada, China, Mexico, Nigeria and other places either too poor or too sparsely populated to withstand the poisonous onslaught. Prepared as a companion text for a PBS Frontline program, Global Dumping Ground personalizes and dramatizes the issue by focusing on the human tragedies resulting from the often criminally negligent disposal abroad of more than 500 million tons of waste a year. After a short but intriguing chapter on possible solutions to the problem, the book concludes with an extensive bibliography and documentary list as well as a roster of relevant treaties and international organizations. More a call to arms than an in-depth analysis, this is nevertheless one of the most accessible introductions to the problem of waste available today. With schools and community groups increasingly concerned with ecological issues, it belongs in libraries and bookstores across the country. -- From Independent Publisher

The result of four years work by the Center for Investigative Reporting for a television documentary, this book (prefaced by Moyers) paints a grim picture. Landfills leak. Incinerators spew. The United States produces one ton of hazardous waste per year for each person in the nation. American public awareness is high, but primarily of the not-in-my-backyard variety, leading to a growing international trade in toxic waste with the United States as net exporter. Taking the path of least effort, industrialists avoid the stringencies of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and contract to have their "toxic stews" shipped across borders. Global Dumping examines the human costs of this shortsighted attitude and asks what we intend to do about it. Recommended.
- Diane M. Brown, Univ. of California Lib., Berkeley
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.