book review, Volume 4 number 5, June/July 2002 Body Toxic and In Sam We Trust Toxins have made the local news lately, from fluoride in the water to those mysterious tanks out at Fort Greely. All of our bodies have been exposed to the decidedly unnatural chemicals which linger in our environment thanks to the industrial revolution and its aftermath. But some have absorbed far more than any human should ever endure. Such is the case for poet Susanne Antonetta. Her immigrant parents, seeking a piece of the American dream, bought a small lot on the swampy southern New Jersey shoreline where the family spent summers and holidays frolicking in the sun. Unfortunately, the neighborhood was also home to numerous factories which freely dumped waste products that seeped into the water table, poisoning residential wells. As if that were not enough, the notorious Oyster Creek nuclear power plant leaked radiation over the same landscape. Meanwhile, DDT was sprayed in the summer to kill pesky mosquitoes. As Antonetta describes in Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, the insecticide was a cooling mist in which she and her friends and siblings would play on hot summer days in the 1960s. The result is chilling. In between memories of growing up in a cold, distant family, she details the relentless string of medical conditions which have plagued her body in adulthood: "I have or have had one spectacular multiple pregnancy, a miscarriage, a radiation-induced tumor, a double uterus, asthma, endometriosis, growths on the liver, other medical conditions like allergies." "Either it’s Sodom and this is the wrath of God, or it’s the wrath of man, which is thoughtless, foolish, and much more lasting." In the end her thoughts turn to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada (since approved by President Bush, ironically just before a small earthquake occurred in the area) where radioactive waste will be stored, presumably in safety, until it is no longer deadly. This, of course, will take thousands of years. Many more, in fact, than the whole of recorded human history. And then there’s the risks of transporting this waste across the continent. That there is such minuscule opposition to this move (outside of Nevada, anyway) speaks volumes about how far removed we are from even a basic moral sensibility. While the morality police have raged in recent decades about people’s sex lives, posting the Ten Commandments, and other such foolishness, we have been damning our descendants to a life amidst our ruins. Our immediate gratification outweighs any consideration of the future. Nuclear waste is the price we pay for keeping skyscrapers lit at night and powering our televisions and computers. We are all guilty, and we will all pay the price someday. What has been done to Antonetta may yet be done to us all. But why worry? We need to go shopping. And where else should we do this than Wal-Mart? The giant discount chain has been a leader in promoting America’s cheap, tawdry, throw-away culture. It helped change the nature of capitalism in this country and along the way almost single-handedly destroyed small-town life. This history is explored by former Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Ortega in In Sam We Trust, a biography of the mega-store’s founder, Sam Walton, and the thousand-headed dragon he unleashed. From the start Walton was driven by dreams of retail glory, employing his magnetic personality to further his vision. No matter that he underpaid his workers or that his stores were knocking out mom-and-pop outfits throughout the land, Walton came across as an affable grandfather type. The corporate culture he created around himself was almost cult-like. Employees were encouraged to invoke the phrase "So help me Sam" when faced with any challenge. In one telling scene from the company’s first annual meeting after Walton’s death, an employee mounts the podium and tells the crowd that Sam is in heaven, looking down, wanting everyone to honor the flag and work for the good of Wal-Mart. A Chinese child-labor activist who attended the meeting told Ortega he had seen nothing like it since the days of Mao. And child labor is where this story inevitably leads. Wal-Mart got caught up in the mid-1990s scandal over the use of sweatshop labor overseas to manufacture its goods. Children (some as young as eight) are locked into factories to make production quotas, often going unpaid for extra work. Severe injuries and deaths are not uncommon. Companies, including Wal-Mart, have supposedly adopted standards to prevent this. But as Ortega shows, they are rarely upheld with the vigor applied to product quality. It’s mostly window dressing, and until Americans decide to care about human rights as much as they do about cheap prices, child labor will continue to be a global nightmare. Ortega dishes plenty more dirt, but the book is actually fairly balanced. The author has a certain grudging respect for Walton and his accomplishments, but clearly sees the damage Wal-Mart has done to American life and economies of scale. Like Eric Schlossers’s best-selling Fast Food Nation, In Sam We Trust is a well-written examination of modern American culture and how we managed to create such an ungodly mess.
| ||
 | | |
