This book reports on the history of those who have been adversely affected by Dow's products, byproducts, and practices, especially from the forties onward. The three main topics are workplace (un)safety, hazardous products, and toxic waste. It's a bit disjointed, though. Most chapters focus on a single product or manufacturing site, and there isn't much of an overarching chronology or a neat conclusion on, say, Dow's culture, or much discussion on how it compares to large corporate culture in general. The author might also have made it clearer that establishing allowable levels for chemical releases doesn't help when bioaccumulation causes the presumed-safe thresholds to be exceeded in people.
Technical editing would have helped as well. There are several typos or misspellings of chemical names, and other errors that would be caught by an editor with some knowledge of chemistry -- for example, the author at one point states, incorrectly, that acetone and benzene are chlorinated compounds. This is not good for the book's credibility. Fortunately, many of the people the author quotes are chemical or medical experts, and the quotes at least seem to be (plausibly) correct. The best parts of the book are the stories of workers or nearby residents that have been affected by Dow, and the people who have tried to solve the problems. Unfortunately, so far it seems that only threats of regulation or litigation have had much effect.
