Your purchase helps support NPR programming. In her new book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, Williams offers her take on - among other things - why breasts are getting bigger and developing earlier, why tumors seem to gravitate toward the breast, and how toxins from the environment may be affecting hormones and breast development.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Breasts Subtitle A Natural and Unnatural History Author Florence Williams Learning that breasts soak up lots of chemicals made Williams wonder just what else was going on with breasts. 'Unfortunately, the breast is also masterful at converting these molecules into food in the way of breast milk.' 'It turns out that our breasts are almost like sponges, the way they can soak up some of these chemicals, especially the ones that are fat-loving - the ones tend to accumulate in fat tissue,' Williams tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. Trace amounts of pesticides, dioxin and a jet fuel ingredient - as well as high to average levels of flame retardants - were all found in her breast milk. She decided to test her own breast milk and shipped a sample to a lab in Germany. When writer Florence Williams was nursing her second child, she read a research study about toxins found in human breast milk. They're also attracting chemicals and environmental toxins, which are getting passed along in breast milk. The result is a fascinating exploration of where breasts came from, where they have ended up, and what we can do to save them.Breasts are getting bigger and arriving earlier. 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. Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History E-Kitap AçıklamasıĪ 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Award Winner in the Science & Technology categoryĪn 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