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| | Description | This new edition of a widely-read and highly-acclaimed book broadens the scope of its predecessors from a heavy focus on industrial chemicals as toxicants to include drugs, food additives, cosmetics and other types of compounds that people are exposed to daily. Also new to the 3rd edition are newer issues-of-the-day such as nanoparticulate toxicants, second hand smoke, food contamination, lead in toys, and others. As such, the book provides the basics of toxicology in easy-to-understand language as well as a fuller understanding of the daily insults to which our bodies are subjected. | |
| | Product Details | | Author: | Patricia Frank | | Paperback: | 284 pages | | Publisher: | John Wiley and Sons | | Publication Date: | March 22, 2011 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0470381124 | | Product Length: | 6.48 inches | | Product Width: | 0.63 inches | | Product Height: | 9.21 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.99 pounds | | Package Length: | 9.21 inches | | Package Width: | 6.14 inches | | Package Height: | 0.71 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.01 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 20 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 20 customer reviews )
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24 of 31 found the following review helpful:
 Useful book, plodding effort Apr 17, 2002
By Nicolas S. Martin
Dr. Ottoboni has two simple objectives in writing this book: to descibe the basics of toxicology and to refute unscientific views about chemicals and their toxicity that lead to unwarranted scares. She accomplishes her goals, but with some discomfort for the reader. Her style is that of a didactic bureaucrat and there are many words that could have been trimmed by an assertive editor. Considering the technical nature of the book and its many scientific assertions, it is inexcusable that the book has no footnotes. Apparently the reader is supposed to accept her declarations at face value. Ottoboni occasionially falls into a trap that she herself warns against by commenting about issues on which he has no expertise. She says, for instance, that the "medical profession now generally accepts the premise that stress can exert a profound influence on the course of many illnesses. Stress can actually be an etiologic (causitive) agent for some cases of such diseases as high blood pressure, ulcers, allergies, colitis, and even cancer." Unfortunately for her, the fact that it was generally accepted did not make it true that ulcers are caused by stress. They are now known to be caused by a bacteria and the former claim that they were caused by stress is a major embarassment to medicine, which made this bogus claim in lieu of proof. It is also highly contestable that the other diseases she names are actually caused by stress, and she offers no evidence for her claim. (Medicine has a tragic history of attributing many diseases to emotional disorder, not the least of which was epilepsy, but Ottoboni shows no awareness of this.) Ottoboni should have restricted herself to what is proven, not what is "accepted." When she writes that "an authority in one field is not, of necessity, an authority in all of the others" she should have understood that that also applies to herself. Instead of this expensive book I would suggest a couple of very well written and documented books that go at the same issues from different perspectives. The first is Edith Efron's "The Apocalyptics : How Environmental Politics Controls What We Know About Cancer," and the second is the recent book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," by Bjorn Lomborg. Both are superb, readable and worth buying. Borrow the Ottoboni book from the library.
Update: This review is for the second edition. I see now that a third edition has been published which no longer mentions stress as a cause of ulcers. It also shows that Dr. Ottoboni has taken on a co-author, so perhaps it addresses my criticisms. I'll give it a read.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Eye-opening, with some blind spots of its own Dec 20, 2011
By Jennifer Mo
I have a longstanding interest in poison, and picked up The Dose Makes the Poison right on the heels of finishing Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. Although the subject matter and a few case studies overlap, they couldn't have been more different. The Dose Makes the Poison is not entertaining popular science or even particularly entertaining. It's exactly what it claims to be: a crash course in toxicology for the interested layman.
As such, it is thorough, knowledgeable, and reads like an introductory science textbook. (It took me over a month to get through it.) M. Alice Ottoboni, a toxicologist with the CA Dept of Public Health, and Patricia Frank, a toxicological consultant for the pharmaceutical industry, undeniably know their stuff as they lay out the principles behind toxicology, experimental methods, risk assessment, etc. The writing is clear, if dry, and fairly easy to understand. At times, the book does come off as a tad condescending. Although geared for the general public, the authors don't think much of us, characterizing us as irrational and prone to hysterical responses. This might be true, but it's hardly the most persuasive way to educate us!
For a science book, it also comes across as a bit defensive and leans pro-industry. I was startled by the seemingly random defense of plastic in the opening chapters in which the authors conclude that it's the public's responsibility to cut up six pack rings to protect sea animals, not industry's to come up with safer packaging. I agree in theory, but the participation rate in even basic recycling programs doesn't bode well for the effectiveness of this approach. In a different example on labeling, Ottoboni and Frank show that regulation is more effective than education, yet the emphasis throughout is squarely on educating the public on risk assessment. Given how much of the book is devoted to showing how difficult it is to produce scientifically sound conclusions about chemical risk, I'm surprised by how little space the precautionary principle gets.
The Dose Makes the Poison makes a strong case that public hysteria over most chemicals is scientifically unjustified and gives us tools for evaluating alarming headlines and chemicals in our own lives. Yet I'm not sure it presents a full picture. The authors concede that our current tests may not pick up all the effects of chemicals or show how they interact, but the overall message is that a substance is probably of negligible toxicity unless definitively proven otherwise. It's a valid view point, but I would be interested to see how a toxicologist from a different background, say the EPA, would respond.
The chapter on experimental methods was difficult for me to get through. I'm not categorically opposed to animal testing for medical purposes, and the authors present good reasons to continue to use animals due to the scale of the experiments needed, but I was taken aback by how high the cost of toxicological knowledge is. The authors also defend cosmetic animal testing, including the infamous rabbit eye tests, as necessary for our safety. The question they don't ask is whether some types of knowledge do not justify the cost, especially since we already have so many well-tested, effective ingredients to use in non-essential cosmetics.
I have definite ideological differences with the authors, and they color this review, but in all fairness, The Dose Makes the Poison offers a thoughtful perspective on the widespread panic over chemicals. I agree that rational, informed decisions are better than automatic condemnation of chemicals, but I also think it's possible to come to different conclusions than the authors do about what role (and how big) we want chemicals to play in our lives.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Big words made clear Nov 25, 2011
By Erika Mitchell
This book is an introduction to the field of toxicology written for informed audiences who may not have a background in science. Frank is a toxicology consultant who works in the field of pharmaceutical registration. Ottoboni is a toxicologist for the California State Department of Public Health and the author of previous editions of this book. The book's topics include the following: what are chemicals, what harm do chemicals cause, what is toxicology and how is it studied, mutagenesis, carcinogenesis, and reproductive toxicity, epidemiology, and the study of risk. End material includes a brief bibliography, a list of abbreviations, a glossary, and an explanation of moles and Avogadro's number. The text is illustrated with a few photographs, illustrations, graphs, and chemical diagrams.
I found this book quite clear and accessible, even though the material covered can be rather complex. The authors' descriptions of such topics as LD50 or the importance of routes of exposure are quite easy to follow and helpful for making sense of toxicology reports. As I read through the book, however, I kept getting the sense of a hidden agenda: virtually all the examples and discussion point out that toxins aren't as dangerous as people might think. The authors even note how the tragedy of the Bhopal disaster was due to shoddy manufacturing processes, not the pesticides being produced. This claim may be true, but there certainly must be other cases where pesticides and other poisons have caused demonstrable harm to humans; however, such examples are never brought out in this text. Readers are cautioned to note the source and quality of toxicity information they encounter, and to avoid exaggerated ire from anti-chemical demagogues, but the importance of carefully examining and perhaps discounting research supported by industry giants showing the supposed safety of their products is avoided in this text.
Risk assessment, one of the key foundations of toxicology, receives only a brief discussion at the end of the book. It would have been useful to have a little more in-depth coverage of this topic, or at least a practical example or two. Overall, the information in the book seems to be accurate. But there is an odd claim towards the end of the book, "there are no documented cases of human cancer from exposure to trace quantities of chemical carcinogens." What about arsenic in drinking water? Given long enough exposures, arsenic at concentrations of 50 ppb, or perhaps even less, is associated with increased risk of skin, lung, bladder, liver, prostrate, and breast cancer; such exposures, and their resultant cancers, are becoming more common as populations shift to drinking groundwater without prior testing for toxic metals. Perhaps the authors meant that, as with tobacco, no particular case of cancer can be specifically linked to a particular exposure, or that a single exposure to a trace quantity of toxin does not lead to cancer; at the very least, the statement is unclear, ambiguous, or misleading, given the clear links between chronic exposures to trace quantities of certain chemicals and cancer. Thus, while the book is informative and clear, readers should keep in mind a possible bias towards understating the dangers of chemicals.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
More Of A Textbook Than A Book For The Lay Person Mar 11, 2012
By Frederick S. Goethel
"wildcatcreekbooks"
My college degree from back in the late 1970s is in environmental health, so I have a fair background with toxicology and poisons. In addition, I sit on the Board of a public health agency where I am exposed to toxicology on a fairly regular basis. My interest in getting this book was to catch up on what I have missed since I left college. After all, a lot has changed in the scientific world in over 30 years.
What I did not want was an introductory text book in poisons and toxicology. What I got was an introductory text in those subjects. The reason for wanting a plain language book is my memory of having to read a toxicology text back in college and the struggle I had getting through it. I relived those weeks again while reading this over the period of several months. It's not that it isn't understandable...it just that it is written in "scientific", as I like to refer to it.
The book contains valuable information that will be of interest. I brushed up on some chemicals and found that things haven't changed quite as much as I thought since I was in college. The principals are pretty much the same; there is just more and better research. I did find a few outdated statements, but overall the book was informative.
If you are interested in this book, please realize it is a basic textbook in the subject and will not be the easiest read.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Toxicology textbook... in semi-plain language (3.5 stars) Nov 23, 2011
By J. Green
Any chemical can be poisonous in the right dose. Drink two gallons of water all at once and you could very well die. Even too much vitamin D is harmful, while smaller amounts are essential. There is a lot of very interesting information in this book, such as the fact that rats can't vomit - which is why manufacturers of rat poison add a chemical that induces vomiting in case dogs, cats, or children (who *can* and frequently *do* vomit) consume their product. It was also interesting to know why you're not supposed to induce vomiting if you swallow gasoline. And I really found the information about mercury poisoning to be interesting, although I do wish they'd told us exactly how to clean it up.
But for all the fascinating information in the book, there was a lot more that just sounded like a chemistry or toxicology textbook (although maybe not as dense). The subtitle says "A Plain-Language Guide to Toxicology," and for the most part it is very plain... but not always. Sometimes words and terms were not explained, and other times they were just repeated a bit too oft. And it didn't help that the tone of the book is sometimes a bit lecturing.
The authors make the point that chemicals are usually maligned by the public and sensationalized by the media. We blame (or at least suspect) them for every illness and especially vilify "synthetic" or man-made chemicals. (In truth, Mother Nature's cupboard is more dangerous than man's.) The fact is that modern chemistry has improved our lives dramatically and a little understanding on our part is very eye-opening. The book also explains the difficulties in determining risks and side-effects of consumer goods, how they are tested (including animal subjects), and the measures used by toxicologists. And while the book makes a lot of good points, it's not always the kind of book you'd describe as "couldn't put it down."
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