Bikrams Beginning Yoga Class or The Body Toxic

Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class

Author: Bikram Choudhury

Sweat, strain, laugh, and do more for your health, body, and general well-being than you even imagined possible as you take your beginning yoga class from Bikram. For more than twenty years, Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class has been among the preeminent and most beloved of all yoga guides-and now it has been revised and updated by Bikram, with virtually all-new photographs and an updated section on yoga's medical benefits.

With nearly two hundred vivid instructional photographs, Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class is the perfect guidebook for any student of yoga, either advanced or beginner-a reference that makes Hatha yoga fun, easy, and completely understandable.

Illustrated throughout with 160 black-and-white photographs by Biswanath "Bisu" Ghosh

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The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-being

Author: Nena Baker

We are running a collective chemical fever that we cannot break. Everyone everywhere now carries a dizzying array of chemical contaminants, the by-products of modern industry and innovation that contribute to a host of developmental deficits and health problems in ways just now being understood. These toxic substances, unknown to our grandparents, accumulate in our fat, bones, blood, and organs as a consequence of womb-to-tomb exposure to industrial substances as common as the products that contain them. Almost everything we encounter—from soap to soup cans and computers to clothing—contributes to a chemical load unique to each of us. Scientists studying the phenomenon refer to it as “chemical body burden,” and in The Body Toxic, the investigative journalist Nena Baker explores the many factors that have given rise to this condition—from manufacturing breakthroughs to policy decisions to political pressure to the demands of popular culture. While chemical advances have helped raise our standard of living, making our lives easier and safer in many ways, there are costs to these conveniences that chemical companies would rather consumers never knew about. Baker draws back the curtain on this untold impact and assesses where we go from here.

The Washington Post - Seth Shulman

Baker has written an illuminating, consumer-oriented book that sifts through some of the latest findings about the dangers of everyday chemicals…Baker's readable chapters separately tackle specific toxic threats, such as the widely used herbicide atrazine or the now-notorious bisphenol A, which was (until recently) widely used as a component in plastic water bottles. Throughout The Body Toxic, Baker gives consumers information to help them make "informed decisions," and she includes a list of a dozen steps she has taken to minimize her exposure to toxic chemicals.

Publishers Weekly

This is a chilling look at the questionable safety of nearly everything we store food in, drink from, wear, walk on, rest on and drive. Chemicals used to make everything from water-repellant jackets and flame retardants to unbreakable plastics used for food storage are building up in our bodies and the environment with possible far-reaching consequences, says journalist Baker. She focuses on "endocrine disruptors" that alter hormone levels, even in fetuses. Individual chapters consider the weed killer atrazine; phthalates found in many cosmetics; and perfluorooctanoic acid, used in nonstick and stain-repellant coatings. Lab studies have linked these chemicals to cancer, diabetes, obesity and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, among other problems. Baker blasts both Democrats and Republicans in Congress for the "toothless" Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which leaves testing and reporting results to the manufacturer. But the companies rely on skilled public relations firms to attack scientists who raise safety concerns. The current pro-business administration also takes some licks from Baker. Although she offers suggestions for reducing exposure to these chemicals, "No place-and no one-is immune." (Aug. 12)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents:

Introduction Coming Clean 3

1 A Chemical Stew: Body Burden 11

2 Chemicals We've Loved: Consumer Conveniences 33

3 Kermit's Blues: Atrazine and Frogs 57

4 What Price Beauty? Phthalates and You 88

5 Up in Flames: Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers 112

6 The Goods on Bad Plastic: Bisphenol A 141

7 Out of the Frying Pan and onto the Paper: Perfluorinated Chemicals 163

8 Reaching Ahead: New Policies 190

Epilogue: My List and Beyond 212

Appendix 1 It's All About You 217

Appendix 2 Environmental and Public-Health Groups That Get It 225

Appendix 3 Learn More from Government Sources 229

Notes 233

Acknowledgments 257

Index 259