A ‘powerful and indispensable publication’ (Gerald Markowitz) over the devastating consequences of environmental racism — and what we are able to do to treat its toxic results on marginalized areas.

Did you know…

Middle-class BLACK households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than those of very poor white households with incomes below $10,000.When swallowed, a lead-paint chip no bigger than a fingernail can send a toddler into a coma — about A Terrible Point to Waste: Environmental Racism and its own Assault for the American Brain one-tenth of that amount will lesser his IQ.Almost two of each five African American homes in Baltimore are suffering from lead-based paint. Almost all of the 37,500 Baltimore children who suffered lead poisoning between 2003 and 2015 were African American.

From injuries due to lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental hazards in staggeringly disproportionate numbers. This systemic onslaught of toxic publicity and institutional carelessness causes irreparable physical harm to thousands of people across the country-cutting lives tragically short and needlessly burdening our health and wellness care system. But these lethal environments develop another insidious and often overlooked result: robbing communities of color, and America as a whole, of intellectual power.

The 1994 publication from the Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of the renewed and heated debate. Right now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste materials, award-winning science article writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray, arguing that IQ is a biased and flawed metric, but that it’s useful for monitoring cognitive damage. She takes aside the spurious idea of cleverness as an inherited characteristic, using copious data that rather indicate a different cause of the reported African American-white IQ gap: environmental racism – a confluence of racism and other institutional factors that relegate marginalized communities to living and operating near sites of poisonous waste, pollution, and insufficient sanitation solutions. She investigates weighty metals, neurotoxins, lacking prenatal care, poor nutrition, and even pathogens as key agents influencing cleverness to explain why areas of color are disproportionately affected — and what can be done to remedy this devastating problem.

Offering extensive scientific research and Washington’s sharp, lively reporting, AN AWFUL Thing to Waste materials will outrage, transform the conversation, and motivate debate.