In Erin Brockovich's long-awaited book--her first to reckon with conditions on our planet--she makes clear why we are in the trouble we're in and warns us that if we're waiting for someone to save us, Superman isn't coming. Nor is the government or the environmental agencies. No one is going to solve this for us. It is up to us, we the people, and Brockovich shows us how.
She shows us what's at stake (the average American uses nearly one hundred gallons of water each day, for everything from drinking to cooking to bathing), writing of the unreported cancer clusters, of plastic pollutants in our tap water (we produce more than three hundred million tons annually of plastic in the world, and half of all plastics created for disposable items such as water bottles), of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues.
She identifies and describes the most toxic chemicals in everyday products, from shampoos and baby lotions to cell phones and Tupperware, with only a few hundred under regulation, among them asbestos, lead, mercury, radon, and formaldehyde.
She describes the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and how her work in Hinckley, California, far from being a oneoff situation, opened up a rabbit hole bigger than anyone could have imagined, leading Brockovich to all of our backyards. We see the communities and people with whom she has worked and who have helped to make an impact: the water operator in Poughkeepsie, New York, who changed his system to create some of the safest water in the country; the moms in Hannibal, Missouri, who became the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water; the woman in Tonganoxie (Tongie), Kansas, who fought to keep a massive, $320 million Tyson chicken processing complex out of her town (population: 5,300).
Throughout, Brockovich, ever inspiring, empowers us, urging us to act on what we know is right: to ask questions, to scrutinize our water professionals; showing us ways to protect our health, our families, and our lives; to storm our city halls, to use local media, town hall meetings, etc., until our water is safe for everyone to drink. Whether we have PhDs, or degrees in science or in law; whether we're politicians, or government or agency officials, Brockovich shows us how we can each take baby steps to make a difference that can, and will, and must change the world.
