Product Description

Mark Schapiro's The Directive does to huge swaths of the consumer landscape what Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation did to the assembly line version of a burger and fries. The results of his work are unsettling.

The Directive should be required reading for anyone concerned about their health. It is one of the most important books on consumer safety you will ever read. Mark Schapiro's revelations will spark a sea change in the way American consumers think about everyday products, as well as the future of environmentalism and the roles we can all play in protecting ourselves from a variety of hidden dangers.

Exploring the changes in the European Union--where stricter consumer safety standards have forced multinationals into manufacturing safer products--Schapiro's exposi shows that, short of strong government intervention, America will lose whatever claim it had to commercial supremacy. Increasingly, its products are equated with serious health hazards, the same hazards that the European Parliament is legislating out of existence in its powerful trading block.

Increasingly, the world looks to Europe for solutions to the most pressing issues of our time, from new energy development, to the environment, to basic human rights like universal health care and a decent standard of living. The United States is in decline. Even China, the world's largest consumer market, now argues that the only way to avoid an environmental meltdown is to follow the path forged by the Europeans.

In The Directive Schapiro takes the reader inside this power shift, which has gone almost wholly unreported in the United States. He shines a light on Europe's evolving search for higher standards that has allowed Brussels, and not Washington, to emerge as the center for global markets innovation in the 21st century. Schapiro's revelations will anger some readers, and inspire still others to action.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #338750 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781933392158
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Americans' confidence in their government-sanctioned environmental and consumer protections receives another blow in investigative reporter Schapiro's exposé, which explores such discomforting information as the 2005 U.S. Centers for Disease Control tests that found 148 toxic chemicals "in the bodies of 'Americans of all ages.'" The U.S.'s unique tendency to take no action against businesses and their products until a disaster occurs keeps them tied to 1970s standards-"exposed to substances from which increasing numbers of people around the world are being protected"-while "the principle of preventing harm before it happens, even in the face of imperfect scientific certainty," guides an increasing number of countries; by "creating legal and financial incentives," governments in Europe and Japan have kept citizens relatively safe from what contributes to the deaths "of at least 5 million people a year," according to the World Health Organization. Schapiro (co-author, with David Weir, of Circle of Poison: Pesticides and People in a Hungry World) discovers toxins in personal care products, toys, electronics and foods which are, in some cases, manufactured solely for U.S. consumption, and traces them to the people and events responsible. Though a look at growing support for change in the U.S. provides some hope, a guide to action would have been an appropriate addition to Schapiro's prescient muckraking.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“Listen up, American business, and save yourselves while you still can. Time and again in his career, journalist Mark Schapiro has been years ahead of the pack in unveiling stories that reveal the emerging global future. This time, Schapiro shows that Europe, by taking the environmental high road, is cleaning America’s economic clock (not to mention exposing its people to much less pollution). The markets of the future are green. America will lose them if it doesn’t get smart, soon.”
-Mark Hertsgaard, author of Earth Odyssey and The Eagle’s Shadow

“A compelling wake-up call from deep inside the trenches. Europe is overtaking us in environmental health and safety regulations, while Americans are being sold out by their own government. This story desperately needs to be told, and Mark Schapiro is just the one to tell it.”
-David Wirth, Professor of Law and Director of International Programs, Boston College Law School

About the Author
Mark Schapiro is editorial director of the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco. He has written extensively on foreign affairs and his work has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and other publications, and has reported stories for Frontline, NOW with Bill Moyers, and public radio’s Marketplace. Schapiro lives in San Francisco, California.