The Poisoning of Michigan

As a person who grew up in Michigan and worked on former dairy farms, I was surprised when my college environmental science teacher recommended this book, as I had never heard of the PBB disaster. An issue of this proportion should be remembered by the communities affected, yet aside from scholarly articles, little has been written on this subject, and this part of history is being lost from the memory of Michigan. This book is a very straightforward read. It has depth enough that someone with science background or agricultural background remains interested, but has simple and clear writing that is easily discernible to any reader. It is the best source of information that I have found relating to the PBB incident.

The story begins in 1973 when the Michigan Chemical Corporation delivered by mistake an unknown quantitiy of PBB to an agricultural feed company. Employees there assumed that the poorly marked brown bags contained the magnesium oxide that had been ordered and mixed it into tons of cattle feed to be delivered all across the state ...