Environmental-Health Books

A call to anarchy, this slim book includes all of the incitement anyone could possibly need to join the organic/vegetarian revolution. The modern agro-industrial food system is poisoning us and the earth, torturing animals and starving people. It is a heavily subsidized, often monopolistic and is being run for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Fox calls out to all of us to pay attention to what's on our plates, look hard at where it is coming from, and mend our ways. He includes a short list of easily followed guidelines for purchasing food, and ten commandments for farmers and food merchants. This one will leave you wondering if Ronald McDonald seems amusing to the 50% of Guatemalan children who are starving to death while that country ships millions of pounds of hamburger to the U.S. each year. It will make you question who's paying off whom to keep the USDA behind dietary suggestions that are unscientific and unhealthy. It will strengthen your resolve to buy locally produced, organic food and thank the farmers who are gentle to our earth.

Dr. Fox has written a concise, readable, and utterly non-extremist review of Agribusiness. I thought that when I opened this book, I might be faced with ranting and horrid pictures. Not the case. This book explores the political arena, the ethical arena, the consumer arena of our food chain. At the end of this chain rest the animals---pumped with drugs and hormones, living unhealthy lives and passing that dis-ease in their bodies onto us. We call it steak and breast meat. It is, in a sense, poison---really---and Fox shows us why and how. Beautifully done!

Great book for any pet-parent. The recipes are quick and easy and the pictures are adorable! Lots of great craft ideas and green-cleaning tips too.

Lots of photographs,recipes and projects in Eco Dog.

The book begins with the advice that, unlike wolves, dogs need to be groomed and washed regularily. Homemade recipes, like dog tonics and an herbal flea powder, are included. The pet owner is also advised to avoid commercial dog shampoos, as they may be harmful.

The chapter on dog food advises to feed the dog high quality food or homemade food and a meatloaf recipe is included. I would have liked to have seen more recipes and more information on feeding good quality food.

I really liked that natural cleaners for the house were advised, with good recommendations. The authors point out that dogs lick stuff--like the floor--and that safe cleaners are imperative to their health.

Some cool projects include green toys to make for your dogs out of recycled objects like socks. Brilliant! Most toys for dogs are made out of synthetic materials derived from petrochemicals, so I really thought the idea of natural toys was great.

Overall, a smart, green book for raising healthy dogs.

From the author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet

This was a good book but I received it somewhat late from amazon.

I was required to buy this as a textbook for a class that I am taking, but I am glad I bought it. It is an easy read and a well-rounded reference for a gamut of environmental health issues and topics. I would recommend this as a textbook for the beginning environmental scientist to build upon as well as a good reference book for the occasional environmentalist.

Forest Health and Protection is an excellent book which include an actual vision the three aspects very important in forest ecosystems. It is a contribution in the forest protection.

This is a softcover reissue of a hardcover text put out previously by McGraw Hill. The content is unchanged, but students will be happy that it's about half the price of the original. It appears tightly bound, durable. The paper is thicker and coarser and so the photos have lost some detail, mostly more contrast and darker. Otherwise I'm very pleased with it. I've been using the previous edition for the past four years as the text for my Forest Protection class at Humboldt State University and I find it's a great overview of wildland fire, forest entomology, and forest pathology. The section on animal damage is deficient, extremely small, and requires supplemental material. Otherwise it's a great desktop reference, good coverage of the material by knowledgable authors, and you cannot beat the value.

I liked this book for its brevity and thoroughness. If you want to pick something up you can read in a few hours that gives a wealth of reliable information and interesting ideas on an ever more important subject then this is a great book for you. Plus the author doesn't leave us hanging in time: there is an associated newsletter that follows up on each of the areas discussed in the book with new research, news, and data. This book covers all your bases and will let you discuss environmental (including energy) policy with anyone and everyone.

I would call this a briefing into the world of environmental policy not only for someone who is just starting to learn about this subject but also for experienced observers. There are numerous up-to-the-minute technologies discussed in the areas of energy, waste, and water. The latest theoretical views of biodiversity loss, climate change, and sustainability economics are also integrated into the discussion. This book is perfect for the advanced high-school senior looking ahead into a career and for the bored housewife wondering about how she might fit into the larger picture. And the book is practical too answering many everyday questions about how to deal with trash, energy, and so on, as well as providing many reliable internet links for further reference. This book is both a breezy read and dense with information and well worth snapping up. I give it a 4/5 because I would have liked to see more of the evidence of climate change and species loss, but as the author says, there are plenty of places to find these data.

Any Environmental Educator or Scout Leader who has ever gone to a program like Geosphere, Project Wild, NatureQuest or Project Learning Tree will LOVE this book.

Everything is organized by lessons and activities that are coded to match certain skills like Predation, Plant Succession, etc.

I have used this book for years at Boy Scout Summer Camps and I know the American Camping Association recommends this book for anyone involved in teaching Environmental Skills & Nature at a camp setting.

Perhaps the only draw back is the plain colorless sketches of the book. A teacher would appreciate the book's content but I would not get this book for a kid. Having said that, this book is a great pick for any leader, summer camp, or school where teaching an understanding & appreciation of nature is a priority.

This Revised and Expanded Edition of Hands-On Nature is an engaging how-to activity book--for children and for anyone looking to bring them before nature, whether at home, school, camp, playground, hiking, a workshop, or other pursuit. Here is a practical guide for the environmental enthusiast. Page after page it exhibits a wide range of detailed illustrations in black and white, many that appear as works of art. The text is well-written and easy to follow and understand with keywords that are highlighted in bold type, easily directing the attention of the reader to an order of valuable terms and particulars on nature. The book is divided into chapters, namely: Adaptations, Habitats, Cycles, Designs of Nature, and Earth and Sky, with related subjects like birds, insects, plants, flowers, streams, earth, deer, logs, and clouds. The chapters are organized into two sections, starting with an informational essay to introduce each chapter, followed by an activity and experiment segment that may include a brief script for a puppet show or play, and a suggested reading list. This book was made possible with the help of a large group of teachers, professionals, students, and volunteers. It should be included in every family's collection of books to read and share.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part tells the "story" of Love Canal five times, each from the perspective of a different interest group: the chemical company that produced the wastes, the homeowners affected, the New York Health Department, etc. These stories are different, often inconsistent. The second part reconciles, so far as is reasonable, the conflicting claims. Like peeling the layers of an onion to finally get to the core, we get an unusually cogent view of what really happened at Love Canal -- and what did not happen.

This book provides a systematic, balanced account of the history of Love Canal as it concerns various interested groups--Hooker Chemical, Love Canal Homeowner's Association, Niagara Falls School Board, press, etc. It is unique in that it does not lean toward any one side in its recounting of the various sides of the story. Its analysis of the impact of the events and the where the responsibilities might rest is certainly one of the best I've read. Also a terrific book on EPA response to a policy crisis--it provides a springboard to further discussion of the media's role in public policy as it concerns environmental issues.

Are our workplaces and homes making us sick? Has the technology that was supposed to make life easier actually ruining our health? The possibilities are frightening.

The Invisible Disease explores the potential that electricity, computers, and commonly used chemicals could actually pose a health risk. In fact, the author presents that a growing number of people are becoming highly sensitive to light, electricity, and chemicals that most of us come into contact everyday. Their symptoms range from rashes and weakness to fatigue and burnout. Moreover, she states that research into these areas are discouraged and suppressed.

It really is a scary thought that the very things that were meant to make our lives easier may actually be harming us. Without empirical data and testing, we really have no idea how widespread the problem or how much of a risk that each of us are putting ourselves through each day.

More and more people have begun to understand that the feelings of fatigue, skin tingling or burning, headaches, and mental confusion that are so common today are related to the widespread proliferation of electromagnetic fields in our environment.

Unwittingly we have created an electrosmog made up of the fields emanating not only from the numerous electronic devices we suddenly find we cannot do without to the unseen, unsmelled, but increasingly sensed electropollution created by the radio-frequency radiation that makes our wireless, cordless and other magical communication toys work.

In fact, these fields have been making people sick since the early 80s--often those who worked in high-tech industries were the first to fall prey. But studies now project, looking at the increases in electrosensitivity in populations--a 2002 study in California found 3.2 percent of the population electrically sensitive--that by 2017 50% of the population will have the condition.

It's not pleasant. From the early symptoms above it can progress--if one does not practice avoidance--to all-over body pain, irregular heart rhythms, severe blood-pressure elevation and eventually collapse.

Gunni Nordstrom reported on this issue and believes the symptoms are brought on by the interaction between the fields and the chemicals emanating from electronic devices. This is a compelling, fascinating, and essential book for anyone attempting to get a grip on the astonishing things we manage to do to ourselves without giving it a thought--until it all goes terrible wrong.

Also read: books by Robert Becker and Blake Leavett for more solid information.

This mother-and-daughter account of their experience of the Hollister Ranch upon which they both grew up moves the reader into a good feel for how land and psyche interact. There is a minimum of speculation and a maximum of sense and event. The life of the ranch, its voice, surfaces now and again through human conflicts and encounters against the backdrop of its imminent sale. As Jane Wheelright says: "The coastline of the ranch is like the floor plan of my life...."

Both writers are Jungian analysts, and most of the Jungian commentary is provided by Lynda Schmidt, who on occasions describes the ranch as a "manifestation of the Self" (for Jung, the Self with a capital S meant the archetype of totality; he also called it the God-image).

I think we must be very careful--and Lynda Schmidt generally is--when we bring in archetypal concepts, because how we do so can either illuminate or devalue their manifestations. It's like describing one's wife as a Goddess figure or an anima container: what happened to the actual woman? If we see wilderness as a manifestation of the Self, or even of God, is this helpful, or does it shift our attention away from the wilderness as an entity in its own right?

This is one of the few books that take the land seriously. Here is a characteristic passage:

I had a strong sense of being buried deep in the soil, lost under the vast, rocky ledges, melted into the landscape, submerged as an integral part of that place. None of the others in my generation had the remotest sense of being so influenced. I was starting at scratch and I felt like a child about to be orphaned.

Jane Wheelwright and Linda Schmidt -- a mother-daughter team -- authored this book, which is really a conversation about the intricate relationship between one's psyche and one's place. Both are trained in psychology -- Jane in Zurich at the Jung Center -- and both bring a refreshingly honest self-critical flair to this book.

The Long Shore is the story of the Hollister family ranch -- a vast oak-studded arroyo-dipping range of coastal grassland near Santa Barbara, California -- and how each author experienced the place psychologically. Their experiences are extremely different, much of which seems related to the gradual conversion of this vast cattle ranch to a series of late-20th century subdivisions. Sound familiar?

By treating this as a personal exploration, and by calling each other down from any soapboxes, the authors go new places in literature. The Long Shore remains the BEST examination I have read of how one's psychological state is derived -- at least in part -- from the state of the land surrounding. How a wild environment parents us. How it challenges us. How it forces a kind of a reflective relationship that few nature-writers have the first-person confidence to detail on the page, and few psychologists have the wherewithal to examine directly in themselves, much less in others.

If you incline toward this kind of exploration of inner nature and outer nature, The Long Shore is a book to own, to savor and return to. If you don't incline toward this, what else are you doing that's more important?

this is simply a great book to read. very informative and the content makes sense in every way. I enjoy reading this book and I recommend this to everyone.

this is simply a very informative, a great book. I recommend this to people who study chemistry in school. very professional book.