Exhibits

The charts, diagrams and engraved plates that stand in the book, each with its chapter, and 12 molecules you can turn in 3D.

• Exhibit 01: Microplastic in Human Brain Tissue, 2016 vs 2024. Bar chart, microplastic in human brain tissue, 2016 vs 2024 archived samples, roughly 3,345 up to 4,917 micrograms per gram, a rise near 47 percent in eight years.
• Exhibit 02: All Pointing the Wrong Way. Four measures falling by birth year, over a rising ground of industrial-chemical exposure. Boys born unaffected is the malformation rate inverted, so every line points the same way.
• Exhibit 03: Rachel Carson. Rachel Carson.
• Plate 1: Bald Eagle Nest. A bald eagle at its nest with a downy chick, a lovable face for the flip-through, the bird whose Great Lakes hatchlings first told Colborn something was wrong.
• Exhibit 04: Theo Colborn. Theo Colborn.
• Exhibit 05: Shanna Swan. Shanna Swan.
• Exhibit 06: John Snow's Broad Street Map. John Snow's 1854 dot map of the Broad Street deaths.
• Exhibit 07: Non-Monotonic Dose-Response. The M-shaped, non-monotonic dose-response.
• Exhibit 08: The Fork: One Surge, Two Chemistries. One testosterone surge forking in two. Down one path an enzyme makes DHT and builds the body; down the other, aromatase makes estradiol and wires the brain.
• Exhibit 72: The M-Shaped Curve. The M-shaped dose-response curve, the standard safety tests marked at the second peak on the right, and the first peak on the left, the one the tests never look at.
• Exhibit 09: The Size Ladder. The Size Ladder, from a single atom to an ostrich egg, with bisphenol-A on the second rung.
• Exhibit 10: How Small Is Small?. How Small Is Small?, one pinch of sugar, diluted.
• Exhibit 11: Where Endocrine Disruptors Come From. Six labeled routes into a body, each with its chemicals named: food and packaging, tap water, personal care, indoor dust, receipts, medical and dental.
• Exhibit 33: DDT Spraying Operations. A municipal fog truck on a summer beach, laying down a thick white cloud, with children in swimsuits running behind it and bathers sitting on the sand to either side.
• Exhibit 34: DDT Is Good for Me. The Penn Salt advertisement reproduced as printed: the cartoon cow, the cartoon apple and the rest of the chorus singing DDT is good for me-e-e, with the block of promotional text beneath.
• Exhibit 12: BPA and Estradiol, Side by Side. Bisphenol-A above estradiol, the two phenol ends aligned down the left. Different molecules, but the ends match.
• Exhibit 13: BPA Laid Over Estradiol. BPA laid over estradiol. The phenol ring and its hydroxyl, the part the estrogen receptor reads, sit on top of the body's own. The cell checks that shape, not the rest of the molecule.
• Exhibit 14: Polycarbonate Water Bottles. Polycarbonate water bottles, the plastic that gives up more BPA as it warms.
• Exhibit 15: Global Plastic Production. Global plastic production, million metric tons per year, 1950 to 2020, a curve that is nearly flat to 1960 and near vertical after 2000.
• Exhibit 16: Sesame Seeds in Palm. An open palm with six sesame seeds in it. That is the weight of plastic measured in a pair of human testicles.
• Exhibit 17: Thalidomide Molecule. The thalidomide molecule in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 18: A Thalidomide Tablet, 1960. A tin, its carton and a spill of loose tablets, as thalidomide was sold over the counter in forty-six countries.
• Exhibit 19: Frances Oldham Kelsey. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA reviewer who would not call it safe, and kept thalidomide off American shelves.
• Exhibit 20: The X and Y Chromosomes. X and Y at forty thousand times magnification, the two chromosomes side by side and visibly unequal in size, with a strand of DNA drawn beside them at a million times.
• Exhibit 22: The Shrinking Y. The Y as it is now.
• Exhibit 23: Lake Apopka. Lake Apopka from the air, the open water and the farmed shoreline around it.
• Plate 2: American Alligator. A juvenile alligator cradled in two cupped hands at the water's edge, small and unalarming, the animal that carried a female's hormones.
• Plate 3: Ibis Courtship. Two white ibis in courtship, bills touching, in the elaborate greeting the species runs, a tender scene for the flip-through.
• Exhibit 25: Mercury Dose and Response in the White Ibis. Dose-response bars, dietary methylmercury (0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.3 ppm) on the X-axis against the share of males pairing with males on the Y-axis, climbing from near zero to 55 percent as the dose rises.
• Exhibit 26: Santa Barbara Island. Santa Barbara Island from the sea, the bare rock the gull colony sits on.
• Exhibit 27: Dog Whelk Shells. Four dog whelk shells drawn side by side and labeled: rough dog whelk, knobbed whelk, banded dog whelk, northern whelk.
• Exhibit 28: Tyrone Hayes. Tyrone Hayes.
• Plate 4: Western Gull Pair. A pair of western gulls at a nest on a sea-stack rock, wings settled, the crowded clutch of eggs below them.
• Exhibit 29: Biomagnification PCBs. Biomagnification of PCBs through the Arctic food web, a bar for each step from seawater at one time, through phytoplankton, zooplankton, Arctic cod and ringed seal, to polar bear at two hundred and fifty thousand times.
• Plate 5: Polar Bear Arctic. A polar bear mother and cub on the sea ice, the most lovable face in the book, and one of the most contaminated animals on Earth.
• Plate 6: Seal Pup on Ice. A harbor seal pup on the ice, wide-eyed, the rung between the fish and the bear.
• Exhibit 30: Phthalate AGD. Anogenital Distance and Phthalate Exposure, the human dose-response: the more phthalate in the mother, the shorter the span in her young son, the body's own gauge of how much of its own signal the child received.
• Exhibit 31: Sperm Count Decline. Sperm concentration, 1973 to 2011, about 99 million per milliliter down to about 47, steepening after 2000. The dashed line beyond is Swan's projection, not data.
• Exhibit 32: Human Ovarian Reserve. Human ovarian reserve, egg cells against age, peaking at six to seven million before birth, one to two million at birth, three hundred thousand at puberty, and the long fall after.
• Exhibit 35: The Dutch Hunger Winter: The Plain Result, Inverted. Bar chart of the Dutch Hunger Winter cohort, adult obesity rate by the trimester the famine struck; the bar for famine in the first weeks stands highest, the late-pregnancy bar lowest, the plain result inverted.
• Exhibit 38: Testicular Dysgenesis. The six endpoints of testicular dysgenesis as a table, each with its direction, and a rate of change only where the record carries one.
• Exhibit 42: Grace Fryer. Grace Fryer, eighteen when she started, twenty-eight when she sued.
• Exhibit 43: The Pont du Gard Aqueduct. A Roman aqueduct in three tiers of arches, carrying water.
• Exhibit 44: Roman Lead Pipe. A Roman lead water pipe, cast and seamed, with its maker's inscription along the barrel.
• Exhibit 47: Bradford Hill Scores. The Bradford Hill scorecard, nine criteria, each scored out of ten.
• Exhibit 48: Bradford Hill: Tobacco vs Endocrine Disruptors. Bradford Hill's nine criteria as paired bars, tobacco against endocrine disruptors, scored one criterion at a time: strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, gradient, plausibility, coherence, experiment, analogy.
• Exhibit 49: Two Regimes. Chemical safety regimes compared, the United States against Europe: who carries the burden of proof, whether pre-market testing is required, how many substances were grandfathered, and how many have been tested since.
• Exhibit 50: 86,000 on the Federal Registry, Under 1% Tested. Six moments from Silent Spring in 1962 to the PFAS finding of 2023, with the count of chemicals on the federal registry set against the fraction ever tested.
• Exhibit 51: African Clawed Frog. The African clawed frog.
• Plate 7: Bald Eagle in Flight. A bald eagle riding the air, wings full, the recovery this book says is possible; a hopeful bookend to the front-page eagle.
• Exhibit 53: Testosterone Molecule. Testosterone in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 54: Dimmer Switch. The binary switch against the dimmer model. Above, sex drawn as one two-position switch. Below, the same thing drawn as a bank of separate sliders, each set independently.
• Exhibit 55: DHT Molecule. Dihydrotestosterone, DHT in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 56: Aromatase Pathway. The fork. A single testosterone surge; 5-alpha-reductase turns it to DHT for the body, aromatase turns it to estradiol for the brain, one signal, two enzymes, two organs.
• Exhibit 57: Estradiol Molecule. Estradiol in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 58: Vinclozolin Molecule. Vinclozolin in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 59: Five Links Chain. Five links from chemical to effect, numbered, each with the evidence that establishes it standing on its own line.
• Exhibit 60: The Sound Ladder. The Sound Ladder. Loudness in decibels from the threshold of hearing at zero to the ceiling of sound in air at 194, a whisper on the second rung from the floor. Every limit a safety regime watches sits in the top third; the endocrine effect is marked down at the whisper.
• Exhibit 61: BPA Molecule. Bisphenol A in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 62: DEHP Molecule. DEHP in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 63: Atrazine Molecule. Atrazine in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 64: DDT Molecule. DDT in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 65: Shorter Anogenital Distance in Boys. Three cohorts that measured anogenital distance, one row each: the study, the boys counted, and what it found.
• Exhibit 66: DDT Spraying Immigrants. A line of men and boys, each one dusted with DDT powder from a hand sprayer.
• Exhibit 67: Lead in Greenland Ice. Atmospheric lead from the Greenland ice core, 500 BCE to the present, the Greek and Roman peak, the medieval low, and the leaded-gasoline spike that dwarfs both.
• Exhibit 68: Three Vulnerability Points. Three routes of disruption drawn as flow diagrams, aromatase induction, estrogen mimicry and androgen blockade, each with its example chemicals, and a note that some chemicals work through more than one at once.
• Exhibit 69: Molecular Mechanisms. Mechanisms of endocrine disruption as a table: mechanism, an example chemical, the action, and the consequence.
• Exhibit 70: Ethinylestradiol Molecule. Ethinylestradiol in three dimensions.
• Exhibit 71: PCB-153 Molecule. PCB 153 in three dimensions.