A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind

Great research on the effects of the pollutants all around us. I live in a farm-community only 20 miles from one of the most polluted, rust-belt, abandoned cities in America. Her book concentrated on the pollution in lower-economic areas, but really drove home for me that we all are effected by serious pollution and need to actively work to find sustainable ways to live for all of us. We are all interconnected.

If you want to know what happens when race, class and pollution meet read this book. Pollution not just kills and sickens but dumbs us down collectively. A call to action.

Harriet Washington doesn’t disappoint in this much-needed perspective. She persuasively argues that toxins play a role in disparities in IQ among different races. She also presents practical solutions and ways to get involved. Great read!

I think she has an important message about environmental justice issues but I did not like her writing style and felt it was all over the place. In addition, while there is some good information, I thought it was very biased and that she was trying to just find sources that supported her claims rather than looking at multiple perspectives. I wish the book had been about the impacts of environmental racism on the overall health of minorities rather than their intelligence, as this claim may be found somewhat insulting and diminishing. I hoped she would have better suggestions for solutions that need to occur as a society.

This book is a mess. First off, I 100% agree with Washington's argument. She is exactly right about environmental racism but this book needed an editor in the worst way. It's redundant, inconsistent, biased (I mean this in that she weighs very heavily on a few key sources and also presents study results in a non-nuanced manner), and random (at times it seems like a laundry list/wikipedia entry that was vying for the most possible examples of illness without going into any details). There is good info in the book but it is a slog to get through.

This book describes the horrific, ongoing impact of toxic air and materials being concentrated in communities of color.  It provides devastating detail of the lowered IQs, anti-social behavioral issues, and other physical and mental issues that are a disproportionately likely result of racist corporate and government decisions to put toxicity there and systematically to ignore and downplay the toxicities.The book is encapsulated by one official quoted in the book, as to why he pushes to locate a toxic site in a minority area: "It's just a bunch of n******."  The book describes a category of injustice and systematic dehumanization as bad as any I have learned about, right up there with the racist prison / sentencing system in Alabama as described by Bryan Stevenson.This will book will open your eyes -- or open them even wider.

This was incredibly well researched and while the subject matter is weighty, the writing style is easily accessible.This is critical reading to understand the IMPACT of the IQ myth of the Black Community in the US and worldwide.First many of the original West African Black subjects tested for IQ were orphaned children fleeing conflict. Also the researchers measuring the IQ were white supremacists. Both factors impact these original IQ scores.Also nutrition and environment impact IQ scores.The history of how this has been used is demoralizing.I appreciate this crucial understanding of how IQ and Black identity intersect.Also the IQ is NOT a measurement of intelligence, just in case you don't read the book.

I was very excited to read this important book. However, this is currently unavailable through kindle unlimited or prime reading. Give Amazon’s recent statement on BLM I had hoped titles like these would have been more accessible. When brought to the attention of customer service, I was told Amazon has not paid for the license of this book to be available. A tangible step Amazon can take to show BLM is to pay more black authors, ensuring these important works are more accessible on Amazon’s larger digital book platforms of Kindle unlimited and prime reading.

Such an important read.