An amazing scientific and personal journey into the lands, animals,
and native peoples of the Arctic, which is home to some of the most dangerous
and lethal contaminants on the planet
Traditionally thought of as the last great unspoiled territory on Earth, the
Arctic is in reality home to some of the most contaminated people and animals on
the planet. Awarded a major grant to conduct an exhaustive study of the
deteriorating environment of the Arctic by the Pew Charitable Trusts (the first
time Pew has given such a grant to a journalist), Los Angeles Times
environmental reporter Marla Cone traveled across the Arctic, from Greenland to
the Aleutian Islands, to find out why the Arctic is toxic.
What she discovered was shocking: Tons of dangerous chemicals and pesticides
from the United States, Europe, and Asia are being carried to the Arctic by
northbound winds and waves and amplified in the ocean's food web. As a result,
Inuit women who eat seal and whale meat have far higher concentrations of PCBs
and mercury in their breast milk than women who live in the most industrialized
areas of the world, and they pass these poisons to their infants, leaving them
susceptible to disease. Polar bears near the North Pole are increasingly born
with altered immune systems and sex hormones.
Silent Snow is not only a scientific journey, but a personal one.
Whether hunting giant bowhead whales with native Alaskans who are struggling to
protect their livelihood, or tracking endangered polar bears in Norway, Cone
reports with an insider's eye on the dangers of pollution to native peoples and
ecosystems, how Arctic cultures are adapting to this pollution, and what
solutions will prevent the crisis from getting worse.
To get an insight into the cause of this problem and why it effects the colder climates of the Arctic more so than the rest of the world and, most importantly, why it matters, spend five minutes reading the excerpt at BookBrowse. It will be time well spent! If you haven't already done so, I also encourage you to browse The Weather Makers.(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Booklist - Donna Seaman
Starred Review. Cone's superb and affecting delineation of the Arctic's chemical crisis and its consequences for us all is galvanizing and necessary.
Kirkus Reviews
Gloomy, stern and wholly memorable - certainly for environmentalists, wherever they may be, but, let's hope, reaching policymakers as well.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Roger Silent Snow Proof reading !! Page 166. " fresh water is DENSER than salt water, so IT SITS ON TOP " . I fear the basic law of physics has been breached.
Marla
Cone is one of the USA's premier environmental
journalists. She has nineteen years of experience
covering environmental issues and has twice won a
national award for environmental reporting.
In 1962 Rachel Carson warned of the the dangers of DDT
in Silent Spring. Now Marla Cone warns of a far
more malignant cocktail of poisons that have already
reached crisis levels in the Arctic region.
The Arctic is the 'canary in the coal mine' for the rest
of the world - what happens there will eventually happen
across the world. Already, the mothers of one in six
babies born in the U.S. have levels of mercury in their
bodies that exceed government safety levels....
As oil prices increase, Coal has effectively become the default fuel for electricity generation in the twenty-first century. Goodell debunks the faulty assumptions underlying coal's revival and shatters the myth of cheap coal energy.
Born on the tundra in the 1950s, Victoria knows nothing but the nomadic life of the Inuit until, at the age of ten, she is diagnosed with tuberculosis and evacuated to a southern sanitarium. When she returns home six years later, she finds a radically different world, where the traditionally rootless tribes have uneasily congregated in small...
These are 2 of the 12 readalike suggestions for Silent Snow. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
Full Story
BookBrowse
(432 words).
of 5
by Roger
Write your own review!
