Glyphosate And The Swirl

In Glyphosate and the Swirl Vincanne Adams explores the chemical glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup and a pervasive agricultural herbicide—as a predicament of contested science and chemically saturated life. Adams traces the history of glyphosate’s invention and its multiple uses as activists, regulators, scientists, clinicians, consumers, and sick people try to determine its safety and harm. Scientific and political debates over glyphosate’s toxicity are agitated into a swirl—a condition in which certainty is continually contested, divided, and multiplied. This movement replicates the chemical’s movement in soils, foods, bodies, archives, labs, and legislative bodies, settling in some places here and in other places there, its potencies changing and altering what it touches with different scales and kinds of impact. The swirl is both an artifact of academic capitalism, activist tactics, and contested scientific facts and a way to capture the complexity of contemporary life with chemicals.

So-called personalized health and precision medicine consist of a plethora of distinct endeavors. Ranging from pharmacogenomics to big data medicine, these endeavors are set out to tailor treatment and prevention to different combinations of data on the biological, behavioral, social, and environmental determinants of health. Currently reaching the trial of implementation across a diverse range of local and national contexts, these innovations call for a thorough empirical scrutiny of the normative, practical, and technical reconfigurations that they engender. Personalized/precision approaches to medicine demand substantive, normative work that consists in reforming social contracts in healthcare, and in ensuring a consistent commitment to change from both institutional actors and citizens.

Herbicides are one of the most widely used groups of pesticides worldwide for controlling weedy species in agricultural and non-crop settings. Due to the extensive use of herbicides and their value in weed management, herbicide research remains crucial for ensuring continued effective use of herbicides while minimizing detrimental effects to ecosystems. Presently, a wide range of research continues to focus on the physiology of herbicide action, the environmental impact of herbicides, and safety. The authors of Herbicides, Physiology of Action, and Safety cover multiple topics concerning current valuable herbicide research.

In Hard Luck and Heavy Rain Joseph C. Russo takes readers into the everyday lives of the rural residents of Southeast Texas. He encounters the region as a kind of world enveloped in on itself, existing under a pall of poverty, illness, and oil refinery smoke. His informants’ stories cover a wide swath of experiences, from histories of LGBTQ+ life and the local petrochemical industries to religiosity among health food store employees and the suffering of cancer patients living in the Refinery Belt. Russo frames their hard-luck stories as forms of verbal art and poetic narrative that render the region a mythopoetic landscape that epitomizes the impasse of American late capitalism. He shows that in this severe world, questions of politics and history are not cut and dry, and its denizens are not simply backward victims of circumstances. Russo demonstrates that by challenging classist stereotypes of rural Americans as passive, ignorant, and uneducated, his interlocutors offer significant insight into the contemporary United States.

Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, First Place (2017) "Reads like a mystery novel as Gillam skillfully uncovers Monsanto's secretive strategies."--Erin Brockovich "A damning picture...Gillam expertly covers a contentious front." --Publishers Weekly "A must-read." --Booklist "Hard-hitting, eye-opening narrative." --Kirkus In Whitewash, veteran journalist Carey Gillam uncovers one of the most controversial stories in the history of food and agriculture. Gillam explores the global debate over the safety of a herbicide so pervasive that it is found in our cereals, snacks, and even in our urine. Known as Monsanto's Roundup by consumers and as glyphosate by scientists, the world's most popular weed killer is sold as safe enough to drink, but Gillam's research shows that message has been carefully crafted to conceal a host of dangers. Whitewash is more than an exposé about the hazards of one chemical. It's a story of power, politics, and the deadly consequences of putting corporate interests ahead of public safety.