Environmental Health Science

We live in a world awash in manmade chemicals, from the pesticides on our front lawns to the diesel exhaust in the air we breathe. Although experts are beginning to understand the potential dangers of these substances, there are still more than 80,000 synthetic compounds that have not been sufficiently tested to interpret their effects on human health.

The Digital Age was expected to usher in an era of clean production, an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants. But as environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman reveals in this penetrating analysis of high tech manufacture and disposal, digital may be sleek, but it's anything but clean. Deep within every electronic device lie toxic materials that make up the bits and bytes, a complex thicket of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, and a host of other often harmful ingredients.

Over his long career as witness to an extreme 20th century, National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, "presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind" - what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity.

What did 19th-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the 19th-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth.

Fulfilling a deathbed request, Nancy Nichols writes about the connection between the industrial pollution in their hometown and the rare cancer that was killing her sister, Sue.

We all understand just how dire the circumstances facing our planet are and that we all need to do our part to stem the tide of climate change. When we look in the mirror, we can admit that we desperately need to go on a climate diet. But the task of cutting down our carbon emissions feels overwhelming and the discipline required hard to summon.

The Slightly Greener Method gives you small, actionable changes you can easily make in your pantry, medicine cabinet, and under your kitchen sink - without breaking the bank or upending your life. By focusing on mico-habits you can build over time and the gradual introduction of safer products, Harris guides you along a roadmap to a greener, more environmentally-friendly lifestyle that can help protect you and your families' health long-term.

It's hard to watch the news, scroll through social media, or listen to the radio without hearing or seeing something disturbing about the climate emergency. This can trigger all sorts of emotions: worry, anger, sadness, guilt, and even grief but also often over-looked positive emotions like motivation, connection, care, and abundance that support mental health and climate action for sustainable longevity. Written by psychologists with extensive experience, this audiobook shows you how to harness these emotions, validate them, and transform them into positive action.

Beyond images of emaciated polar bears and drought-cracked lakes, there remains a major part of climate change's impact that the media has neglected: how our health will suffer from higher temperatures and extreme weather. From spiraling rates of asthma and allergies and spikes in heatstroke-related deaths to swarms of invasive insects carrying diseases like dengue or West Nile and increases in heart and lung disease and cancer, the effect of rising temperatures on human health will be far-reaching, and is more imminent than we think.

At the age of 33, Erik Reece's father, a Baptist minister, took his own life, leaving Erik in the care of his grandmother and his grandfather - also a fundamentalist Baptist preacher and a pillar of his rural Virginia community. While Erik grew up with a conflicted relationship with Christianity, he unexpectedly found comfort in the Jefferson Bible. Inspired, he undertook what would become a spiritual and literary quest to identify an "American gospel" coursing through the work of both great and forgotten American geniuses, from William Byrd to Walt Whitman to Lynn Margulis.

How does climate change make you feel? Sad? Afraid? Powerless? Guilty? Manage your eco-anxiety with this helpful guide. Drawing on years of experience as a psychoanalyst, Anouchka Grose shares cutting-edge insights on how to manage your eco-anxiety. Find out how to validate your emotions and build your resilience. Discover the comfort that can be found in your community.