You may also be looking for David B. Steinman, builder of bridges.
David Steinman is an environmentalist, journalist, consumer health advocate, publisher and author. His major books include Diet for a Poisoned Planet (1990, 2007), The Safe Shopper’s Bible (1995), Living Healthy in a Toxic World (1996), and Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save the Planet Earth from Global Warming Meltdown (2007), which introduces a concept he calls Green Patriotism.
Early career
In 1985, David Steinman was writing for the LA Weekly when he learned that fish in the Santa Monica Bay were tainted with DDT and PCBs. He organized research that found levels of DDT and PCBs were elevated in the blood of local sport fishermen, and his team’s findings were published in the Journal of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. This human blood study corresponded with the beginnings of the Heal the Bay movement to clean up Santa Monica Bay.
As a journalist, Steinman won awards for his reporting from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, Sierra Club, and the Society of Professional Journalists (“Best of the West: Environment and Natural Resources Reportingâ€).
In 1986, Steinman testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on Health and the Environment as an expert witness on the levels of chemical contaminants in fish and the blood of fishermen who ate locally caught fish in Southern California. From 1989 to 1991, Steinman served as a member of the Committee on Evaluation of Safety of Fishery Products for the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. Steinman was also a contributing author of Seafood Safety (National Academy Press, 1991).
Environmental Books and Leadership
Steinman’s contributions to Seafood Safety led to his controversial book Diet for a Poisoned Planet (Crown 1990, Ballantine 1992; Thunder’s Mouth Press 2007). Steinman made hundreds of requests under the Freedom of Information Act for government studies on food safety and reviewed tens of thousands of chemical analyses on food. In Diet, he identified foods with the lowest and highest toxicity levels by classifying them as green-, yellow- or red-light foods. The book recommended the Purification Rundown, a "detoxification" regimen created by L. Ron Hubbard as part of the scripture of Scientology. It was criticized by sectors of the food industry as well as by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and by C. Everett Koop, the former Surgeon General of the United States. The California Raisin Advisory Board spent over $500,000 on a PR campaign to directly counteract Steinman’s warnings about industrial chemical and pesticide residues in raisins.
In 1995, Steinman wrote Safe Shopper’s Bible: A Consumer’s Guide to Nontoxic Household Products, Cosmetics and Food (Macmillan) with a foreword by Ralph Nader, and which included a comprehensive review of products from pet supplies to carpeting to auto products. He held a press conference with Ralph Nader challenging 12 manufacturers and distributors of the most dangerous products, calling them “the Dirty Dozen†in an effort to force manufacturers to reformulate their products or pull them from the market. The following year, Steinman wrote Living Healthy in a Toxic World: Simple Steps to Protect You and Your Family from Everyday Chemicals, Poisons, and Pollution (Perigree, 1996) with foreword by actress and Scientologist Kirstie Alley.
Since 1996, Steinman has been an advisory board member for The Green Guide Institute, a national non-profit, organization for consumer research and information run by Wendy Gordon Rockefeller. In 2000, Steinman served as Chairman of Citizens for Health, a national nonprofit consumer advocacy group known as the voice of the natural health consumer. He has also been featured as a consumer health advocate in the media on TV, radio and in the press.
On February 8, 2007, Steinman led a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. regarding the presence of the undisclosed carcinogenic petrochemical 1,4-dioxane in children's and adult's bath and beauty products. Held jointly with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and with participation from the Environmental Working Group, the conference highlighted a range of products including name-brand baby shampoos and bubble baths that were found in lab tests to have the carcinogenic petrochemical in significant amounts, although it was never included in product labeling. The press conference also called for official FDA oversight of the cosmetics and personal care products industry, which is currently self-regulated and subject only to suggestions from the FDA.
On March 14, 2008, Steinman led a similar press conference with the Organic Consumers Association at the Natural Products Expo in Anaheim, CA regarding the presence of 1,4-dioxane in "organic" and "natural" personal care products. This press conference led to the California Attorney General suing four companies with 1,4-dioxane in their cleaning and/or personal care products in June 2008. On March 6, 2009, Steinman and the Organic Consumers Association announced at the Natural Products Expo that 16 major brands had cleaned up 1,4-dioxane from 23 of their products, and that they would bring legal action against several brands whose products still had high amounts of the chemical.
On March 12, 2010, Steinman and the Organic Consumers Association, in cooperation with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and Clean Water Action, announced at the Natural Products Expo that Procter & Gamble had agreed to reformulate 18 of their Herbal Essences products to reduce levels of 1,4-dioxane to 10ppm (parts per million) or below. They also released results of a new study testing 20 laundry detergents for 1,4-dioxane which found the highest levels in P&G brands Tide, Tide Free, and Ivory Snow.
Steinman also wrote the introduction to 50 Simple Steps to Save the Earth from Global Warming by the Green Patriot Working Group (Freedom Press, 2008).
Freedom Press
In 1998, Steinman founded Freedom Press, a publishing house for books and magazines on health and the environment. In the same year he founded the science-based health magazine The Doctors’ Prescription for Healthy Living.
Radio Show
In January 2008, Steinman began hosting Green Patriot Radio with David Steinman, a weekly one-hour Internet radio show on www.blogtalkradio.com (previously on www.webtalkradio.net). The show featured interviews with authors, journalists, scientists, corporate executives, politicians, doctors and other experts on a variety of environmental and natural health issues. The show went on hiatus as of September 2011.
Run for Congress
Steinman ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in California's 33rd congressional district in 2012 as a Green Party candidate, running against incumbent Democratic candidate Henry A. Waxman and others. Steinman lost in the June 2012 nonpartisan blanket primary, coming in sixth place with just 3.5% of the vote.
Books by David Steinman
- Diet for a Poisoned Planet (1990, 2007) ISBN 1-56025-922-1
- The Safe Shopper’s Bible (1995) ISBN 0-02-082085-2
- Living Healthy in a Toxic World (1996) ISBN 0-399-52206-9
- The Breast Cancer Prevention Program (1998) ISBN 0-02-862634-6
- Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save the Planet Earth from Global Warming Meltdown (2007) ISBN 1-56025-806-3
References
- Ahmed, Farid E. (Ed.) and The Committee on Evaluation of the Safety of Fishery Products. Seafood Safety, National Academy Press (1991).
- Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. "Cancer-Causing Chemical Found in Children's Bath Products". http://www.safecosmetics.org/newsroom/press.cfm?pressReleaseID=21, accessed 2-12-07.
- Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. "Procter & Gamble to Reduce Toxic Chemical in Herbal Essences Shampoo". http://safecosmetics.org/article.php?id=620, accessed 12-17-10.
- Cone, Marla, “Popular 'green' products test positive for toxicant: A cancer-causing chemical is found in almost half of 100 such goods studiedâ€, Los Angeles Times, 3-14-08. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-natural14mar14,1,3735606.story, accessed 3-24-08.
- Cone, Marla, “Testing finds traces of carcinogen in bath productsâ€, Los Angeles Times, 2/9/07. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-bath9feb09,1,2514820.story?coll=la-news-a_section, accessed 12-12-07.
- Dykema, Ravi. “The Cancer Frontlines: Supermarket Aisles.†Nexus, Colorado’s Holistic Journal, January/February 1997, pp. 31â€"36.
- Facenda, Vanessa L., “Cancer-Causing Contaminant Soils Cleaning Productsâ€, Brandweek, 3/17/08. http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003726559, accessed 3-24-08.
- “Flying the Koop: A Surgeon General's Reputation On the Line.†PR Watch, Volume 5, No. 4, 4th quarter 1998.
- Glendinning, Chellis. “A Diet Designed for Human Survival.†San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 1990.
- Gossett, Richard W.; Wikholm, Gary; Ljubenkov, John and Steinman, David. “Human Serum DDT Levels Related To Consumption of Fish from the Coastal Waters of Los Angeles.†Journal of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 1989(8):951-955.
- Malkin, Stacy. Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, New Society Publishers (2007), pp. 54â€"56.
- Organic Consumers Association. "California Attorney General sues companies with personal care products containing 1,4-dioxane", http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_12797.cfm, accessed 6-12-08.
- Organic Consumers Association. "Carcinogenic 1,4-Dioxane Found in Leading "Organic" Brand Personal Care Products", http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/DioxaneRelease08.cfm, accessed 3-24-08.
- Organic Consumers Association. "OCA's New Study Finds Greatly Reduced Carcinogens in Personal Care Products", http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17156.cfm, accessed 3-10-09.
- John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Common Courage Press (1995), pp 6â€"10, 184-5.
- Sheldon Rampton. “Ketchum (the UN's PR Firm) Tackles Corporate Responsibility.†PR Watch, Volume 8, No. 4, 4th quarter 2001.
- Singer, Natasha, “Should You Trust Your Makeup?†The New York Times, 2/15/07. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/fashion/15sside.html, accessed 12-12-07.
- Steinman, David. “Poison Fish, Poisoned Fishermen? A Special LA Weekly Investigative Report.†LA Weekly, Volume 7, no. 49, November 1, 1985, pp. 13â€"18.
External links
- 1,4-dioxane press conferences website
- Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website
- Freedom Press and The Doctors' Prescription for Healthy Living magazine website
- The Green Guide advisory panel
- Green Patriot website
- Green Patriot Radio with David Steinman website
- David Steinman for Congress website