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(More customer reviews)Dr. Ottoboni has two simple objectives in writing this book: to descibe the basics of toxicology and to refute unscientific views about chemicals and their toxicity that lead to unwarranted scares. She accomplishes her goals, but with some discomfort for the reader. Her style is that of a didactic bureaucrat and there are many words that could have been trimmed by an assertive editor. Considering the technical nature of the book and its many scientific assertions, it is inexcusable that the book has no footnotes. Apparently the reader is supposed to accept her declarations at face value. Ottoboni occasionially falls into a trap that she herself warns against by commenting about issues on which he has no expertise. She says, for instance, that the "medical profession now generally accepts the premise that stress can exert a profound influence on the course of many illnesses. Stress can actually be an etiologic (causitive) agent for some cases of such diseases as high blood pressure, ulcers, allergies, colitis, and even cancer." Unfortunately for her, the fact that it was generally accepted did not make it true that ulcers are caused by stress. They are now known to be caused by a bacteria and the former claim that they were caused by stress is a major embarassment to medicine, which made this bogus claim in lieu of proof. It is also highly contestable that the other diseases she names are actually caused by stress, and she offers no evidence for her claim. (Medicine has a tragic history of attributing many diseases to emotional disorder, not the least of which was epilepsy, but Ottoboni shows no awareness of this.) Ottoboni should have restricted herself to what is proven, not what is "accepted." When she writes that "an authority in one field is not, of necessity, an authority in all of the others" she should have understood that that also applies to herself. Instead of this expensive book I would suggest a couple of very well written and documented books that go at the same issues from different perspectives. The first is Edith Efron's "The Apocalyptics : How Environmental Politics Controls What We Know About Cancer," and the second is the recent book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," by Bjorn Lomborg. Both are superb, readable and worth buying. Borrow the Ottoboni book from the library.
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This new edition of a widely-read and highly-acclaimed book broadens the scope of its predecessors from a heavy focus on industrial chemicals as toxicants to include drugs, food additives, cosmetics and other types of compounds that people are exposed to daily. Also new to the 3rd edition are newer issues-of-the-day such as nanoparticulate toxicants, second hand smoke, food contamination, lead in toys, and others. As such, the book provides the basics of toxicology in easy-to-understand language as well as a fuller understanding of the daily insults to which our bodies are subjected.
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