Beyond the Book: Background information when reading Silent Snow

Beyond the Book

This article relates to Silent Snow

Marla Cone is one of the USA's premier environmental journalists. She has nineteen years of experience covering environmental issues and has twice won a national award for environmental reporting.

In 1962 Rachel Carson warned of the the dangers of DDT in Silent Spring. Now Marla Cone warns of a far more malignant cocktail of poisons that have already reached crisis levels in the Arctic region.

The Arctic is the 'canary in the coal mine' for the rest of the world - what happens there will eventually happen across the world. Already, the mothers of one in six babies born in the U.S. have levels of mercury in their bodies that exceed government safety levels.

A cloud of haze over the Arctic was first noticed in 1952. Today, the cloud is the size of Africa and in springtime resembles the smog over Los Angeles.

A map of the Arctic region.

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This "beyond the book article" relates to Silent Snow. It originally ran in May 2005 and has been updated for the April 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.