One senses that she is proud of herself for refusing even an Advil after giving birth and for eating organic food and climbing mountains, but this slightly smug tone detracts from the otherwise valuable evidence she presents. Her conviction that childbearing and lactating protect women from breast cancer may alienate women who either can’t or don’t wish to have children. While Williams excels at making complex science understandable to an educated lay audience, some of her conjectures come across as hyperbole, as she decries “modern times” in which we are “marinating in hormones and toxins” without considering some of the ways in which chemistry has led to better living. The author peppers these encounters with accessible information on how breasts evolved, how they develop and, tragically, how they can go wrong. In the name of science, she also volunteered for experiments, “detox” from processed foods and personal-care products and sent her breast milk to a lab to test for flame-retardants. “Breasts are an ecosystem,” she writes, “governed by long-evolved functions, migrating molecules, and interconnected parts.” Williams buoys her arguments by interviewing a host of scientists, surgeons, breast-implant candidates and even former Marines who believe they have developed breast cancer from drinking tainted water at the Camp Lejeune base.

The result is a fascinating exploration of where breasts came from, where they have ended up, and what we can do to save them.Five decades after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, breasts may have replaced birds as early indicators of chemically induced catastrophe.Īccording to Outside editor Williams, breasts are the proverbial canaries in the coalmine, warning us of environmental damage that may be causing early puberty, breast-milk contamination and other maladies. Her investigation follows the life cycle of the breast from puberty to pregnancy to menopause, taking her from a plastic surgeon’s office where she learns about the importance of cup size in Texas to the laboratory where she discovers the presence of environmental toxins in her own breast milk. In this informative and highly entertaining account, intrepid science reporter Florence Williams sets out to uncover the latest scientific findings from the fields of anthropology, biology, and medicine. What makes breasts so mercurial-and so vulnerable? Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer, even among men.

Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier, and attracting newfangled chemicals.

But in the modern world, the breast is changing. An engaging narrative about an incredible, life-giving organ and its imperiled modern fate.ĭid you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it’s sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece.

Breasts by Florence Williams