Midday with Dan Rodricks 4-18-11 Hour 2 What's Gotten Into Us?

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midday 110418hr2.mp3

After a cancer scare, McKay Jenkins, professor of journalism at the University of Delaware, was compelled to look deeper into the existence of chemicals that we encounter in our everyday lives. He found that in the last twenty-five years, America’s consumption of synthetic chemicals has increased 8,200 percent. And that such rapid proliferation has outpaced our ability to monitor their effects on our health and the environment. Jenkins considers the impact of materials in our modern lives - the bleach, the lawn fertilizer, the flame retardant – and asks, how much do we really know about their safety, and how can we be educated consumers when it comes to the toxic chemicals that we encounter daily? Jenkins joins us in Studio A this hour.