Kirsti's Reviews > Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation

I was planning to read this anyway, and then it won a Pulitzer.

I'm always dubious when a book blurb says that a particular nonfiction work is paced like a novel. But this one is. I got to the end of a chapter, and the last sentence was something like, "It seemed like a good place to put a series of wells to fulfill the town's ever-increasing need for drinking water. It was well away from the chemical plant and the polluted river. The only things nearby were a few egg farms." And I thought NO STAY AWAY FROM THE EGG FARMS PEOPLE WILL DIE.

It astonishes me that three selfish, stupid people could singlehandedly create a Superfund site--the 105th-worst toxic dump in the country, according to the federal government. The actual chemical plant that had been in business for decades and that employed thousands of people ranked 113th on that same list.

People's comments during the crisis never ceased to amaze me. Secretaries at the plant tell their bosses that walking through the dye rooms causes their stockings to melt, and the response is, "Where do you think you work, an ice-cream factory? Be grateful you have a job." And the anonymous note in the activist's mailbox . . . oy. And a group of Toms River kids wins the Little League World Series, and the parents say things like, "Where do they get the talent? It must be something in the water."

Interesting parallels between this and the poisonings in Woburn, Mass.

I liked that he finished the book by going to China and discussing the threats there. These problems are going to come up again.

I'd never heard of molecular epidemiology. Studies of neighborhood cancer clusters are nearly always inconclusive, so instead of studying huge groups of people, some scientists are examining the cells of affected and potentially affected people.