Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan - Rilegato

Walker, Brett

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0295989548 ISBN 13: 9780295989549

Casa editrice: Univ of Washington Pr, 2010

Riassunto

Every person on the planet is entangled in a web of ecological relationships that link farms and factories with human consumers. Our lives depend on these relationships -- and are imperiled by them as well. Nowhere is this truer than on the Japanese archipelago.

During the nineteenth century, Japan saw the rise of Homo sapiens industrialis, a new breed of human transformed by an engineered, industrialized, and poisonous environment. Toxins moved freely from mines, factory sites, and rice paddies into human bodies.

Toxic Archipelago explores how toxic pollution works its way into porous human bodies and brings unimaginable pain to some of them. Brett Walker examines startling case studies of industrial toxins that know no boundaries: deaths from insecticide contaminations; poisonings from copper, zinc, and lead mining; congenital deformities from methylmercury factory effluents; and lung diseases from sulfur dioxide and asbestos.

This powerful, probing book demonstrates how the Japanese archipelago has become industrialized over the last two hundred years -- and how people and the environment have suffered as a consequence.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Brett L. Walker is Regents' Professor and department chair of history and philosophy at Montana State University, Bozeman. He is author of The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800 and The Lost Wolves of Japan.

Product Description:

The Earth's environment is interlaced with complex, constructed ecological pathways that link industrial facilities and human consumers. Nowhere is this truer than on the Japanese archipelago. During the nineteenth century, Japan saw the rise of Homo sapiens industrialis, a new breed of human who was transformed by an engineered, industrialized, and poisonous environment. Toxins moved freely through mines, factory sites, and rice paddies and more directly into human bodies. "Toxic Archipelago" explores the relationship between the causes of colossal toxic pollution and the manner in which pain caused by pollution insults porous human bodies. Brett Walker examines startling case studies of industrial toxins that know no boundaries: a killer pollution from insecticide saturations; poisonings from copper, zinc, and lead mining; congenital deformities from methyl mercury factory effluents; and lung diseases from sulfur dioxide and asbestos. This powerful and thoughtful book demonstrates a deep understanding of how the Japanese archipelago has become industrialized over the last two hundred years and the human and environmental consequences of that transformation. Brett L. Walker is Regents' Professor and department chair of history and philosophy at Montana State University, Bozeman. He is author of "The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800" and "The Lost Wolves of Japan".

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of Washington Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0295989548
• ISBN 13: 9780295989549
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 352