Noelle: I also started in the toxic chemicals world, but my background is more in the natural sciences. I came more from the side of international politics around hazardous chemicals and then moved into focusing on mercury, as it become more of an international political issue in the 2000s. From there, I segued into studying heavy metals, including mercury. I started with legacy chemicals such as DDT, with Rachel Carson raising early warnings in the 1960s, and PCBs, and researched how societies set about discovering the problem with these chemicals and how they regulated-or did not regulate-their production and use. Henrik: My original research was on hazardous chemicals. You’ve been working on it for more than 15 years now-how did the fascination with mercury in particular start for both of you? That’s such a long-time theme in both scientific and popular history.Īnd, I have to say, the element you’ve chosen to specialize in, mercury, is particularly fascinating and very much part of popular culture. There’s also a fascination with gold and turning things into gold. Noelle: There’s also a longtime fascination with the elements, of thinking about what makes up the world, what the components of things are-like earth, air, fire and water, for example. By understanding the elements and how they are connected to each other and to human beings, we get a better understanding of the world around us. One theme in both our book Mercury Stories and all the five books that we’ve chosen is how people have discovered elements and how that has shaped society, but also how society has then shaped these elements, including the way biogeochemical cycles have been altered by human activities. I view the periodic table and the elements as the combinations that affect our lives. It’s a language by which materials and technologies are built. Noelle Eckley Selin: The periodic table contains the building blocks for so many substances that are useful for our society. Foreign Policy & International Relationsīefore we get to the books you’re recommending about various elements, do you think the periodic table is a useful prism for looking at the world?.
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