The Last Taboo

1 December 2008

Except in schoolboy jokes, the subject of human waste is rarely aired. We talk about 'water-related' diseases when most are sanitation-related - in short, we don't mention the shit.

Pandora's Poison

29 October 2003

Pandora's Poison presents a solution to one of the most insidious environmental problems of our time: the global build-up of toxic chemicals.

The Feminization of Nature

22 August 2000

This is science journalism of a high order. It is also a detective story that needs telling. Twenty-five years ago a young Danish scientist, Niels Skakkebaek, came across the first clue that something was going very wrong with male reproductive health. He found strange 'empty cells' in the tissues of the testes of infertile men that had never been seen before.

Preventing Breast Cancer

22 August 2000

Over half a million women worldwide die of breast cancer each yearThis toll has crept up gradually since the early 1950s and is now of epidemic proportions, especially in Europe and North America where more than half the 900,000 women diagnosed with the disease live. Cathy Read's book is indicative of women's fight back against what seems to be an inexorable disease.

Living Downstream

22 August 2000

The World Health Organisation has concluded that 80 per cent of cancer can be attributed to environmental factors. This alarming statistic begs a book like Living Downstream and author, Sandra Steingraber, a biologist, poet and cancer survivor, offers a convincing argument linking certain cancers to environmental contamination.

In Brief

22 August 2000