Charles Duhigg Quotes
Drinking water that does not meet a federal health guideline will not necessarily make someone ill. Many contaminants are hazardous only if consumed for years. And some researchers argue that even toxic chemicals, when consumed at extremely low doses over long periods, pose few risks.
Duhigg, Charles. "Toxic Waters: Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering." The New York Times, 12 Sept. 2009.
This scientific quotation is politically important because it defines the difficult problem of setting acceptable and safe environmental and work standards for air or water quality and contact with potentially toxic substances. As this quotation illustrates, everything is toxic if given in large enough doses. Table salt can kill a human if enough if ingested. Tiny amounts of even a poison will do no harm. What makes setting of standards still more complicated is that human beings differ in the amount of a substance it would take to produce a toxic reaction. Allergies are the best example, but the variability of sensitivity always exists.
Freedom Industries, which makes chemicals for the mining industry, polluted the water supply of the entire 9 county region in WV when the 40,000 gallon tank that was supposedly safe as a holding tank for dangerous chemicals gave way and the chemicals were not then stopped or contained as they were supposed to have been by the containment grading and landscaping. The chemicals flowed down hill to the river which in turn polluted the entire water supply of Charleston, West Virginia and the 9 surrounding counties.
Charles Duhigg (born 1974) is an American journalist and non-fiction author. He was a reporter for The New York Times, currently writes for The New Yorker Magazine and is the author of two books on habits and productivity, titled The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business and Smarter Faster Better. In 2013, Duhigg was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series of 10 articles on the business practices of Apple and other technology companies.
