“American Poison has it all: history, biography, personality, and a dramatic rivalry that keeps the pages turning. Captivating, enlightening, and powerful.”
AMERICAN POISON
** Coming February 2025 **
“American Poison is an absolutely first-rate book, in which Daniel Stone displays his impressive research and storytelling prowess to craft a compelling, accessible narrative that I didn’t want to end. I found myself quoting it out loud to anyone who would listen. Fascinating, gripping and essential reading for all.”
“This book is an essential environmental history. But, equally important, it’s a blazing torch of a tribute to people, like Alice Hamilton, who fight unheralded to make the world safer for the rest of us.”
From the national bestselling author of The Food Explorer and Sinkable, comes the untold story of Alice Hamilton, a trailblazing doctor and public health activist who took on the booming auto industry—and the deadly invention of leaded gasoline, which would poison millions of people around the world.
At noon on October 27, 1924, a factory worker was admitted to a hospital in New York, suffering from hallucinations and convulsions. Before breakfast the next day, he was dead. Alice Hamilton was determined to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
By 1924, Hamilton had pioneered the field of industrial medicine in the United States. She specialized in workplace safety years before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created. She was the first female professor at Harvard. She spent decades inspecting factories and mines. But this time, she was up against a formidable new foe: America’s relentless push for progress, regardless of the cost.
The 1920s were an exciting time. Industry was booming. Labor was flourishing. Automobiles were changing roads, cities, and nearly all parts of American life. And one day, an ambitious scientist named Thomas Midgley triumphantly found just the right chemical to ensure that this boom would continue. His discovery—Ethyl leaded gasoline—set him up for great wealth and the sort of fame that would land his name in history books.
Soon, Hamilton would be on a collision course with Midgley, fighting full-force against his invention, which poisoned the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the basic structure of our brains.
American Poison is the gripping story of Hamilton’s unsung battle for a healthy planet, and the ramifications that continue to echo today.