Summary: They are now banned worldwide-but the toxins known as PCBs are not going away. This program explains how the compounds have almost irreparably polluted the globe and still threaten future generations. The film begins in 1927, when PCBs became integral to electric power and, eventually, a vast array of agricultural and technological products. Describing the growth of scientific awareness of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: For most of a century, industrial and automotive smoke were equated with progress and prosperity. But the cost in human health has been devastatingly high, particularly in developing countries. In this program, Devra Davis, author of When Smoke Ran Like Water; Peter Brimblecombe, executive editor of Atmospheric Environment; and others use examples such as smog-related deaths in Donora,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As a gasoline additive, lead suppresses engine knock. Lead is also a well-known poison, and yet during the 1920s it was championed over safer alternatives-and even backed by the U.S. surgeon general. Why? This program presents the history of leaded gasoline and its impact on human health and intelligence, most notably as documented in Herbert Needleman's controversial study of schoolchildren....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Freon was a refrigeration breakthrough in 1928. It took 45 years for scientists to recognize its dangers, and another 15 for the international community to enact a worldwide ban on all CFC gases. This program illustrates that long process of problem-solving and political action, focusing on the work of Nobel-winning chemists F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina and how their discoveries led to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006