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Deborah Blum

Biography

Deborah Blum

Deborah Blum is director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, and publisher of Undark magazine. In 1992, she won the Pulitzer Prize for a series on primate research, which she turned into a book, THE MONKEY WARS. Her other books include THE POISONER’S HANDBOOK, GHOST HUNTERS, LOVE AT GOON PARK and SEX ON THE BRAIN. She has written for publications including The New York Times, Wired, Time, Discover, Mother Jones, The Guardian and The Boston Globe. Blum is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a lifetime associate of the National Academy of Sciences.

Deborah Blum

Books by Deborah Blum

The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
by Deborah Blum - History, Nonfiction

By the end of the 19th century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. Food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety or even labeling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as "The Poison Squad."