The Truth About Where You Live: An Atlas for Action on Toxins and Mortality

There are large geographic variations in the United States for many measures of health and hundreds of superficially plausible socioeconomic, behavioral, genetic, and environmental factors that may account for these differences. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Rachel Carson's landmark condemnation of DDT,Silent Spring, and grassroots environmental activism shows no sign of abating. The past decade has fueled the trend with horrific industrial disasters, rapid growth of "right-toknow" laws, ready individual access to powerful computer databases, and growing citizen and media reluctance to defer to "the experts." Into this combustible mixture plunges Benjamin Goldman's provocative bookThe Truth About Where You Live, which embodies the promise and problems of citizen activism on issues of environmental health. Goldman has spent the past five years building a database, largely from US Environmental Protection Agency information and death certificate data, adjusted for age, sex, and race. Using over 100 computer-generated maps,