Popular Science Review - The Poison Paradox

Home Authors Books Subjects Events Software Features Links Newsletter Gifts Blog Write Review What's New

Review - The Poison Paradox - John Timbrell

This book is subtitled chemicals as friends and foes, emphasizing one of John Timbrell's main themes - that chemicals can be bad or good for us, whether they are natural or synthetic. The other recurring idea come from Paracelsus, the influential sixteenth century alchemist: "All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison." This is repeated many times through the book - in fact repetition can be a bit of a problem with specific poisons cropping up in more than one place, and even the same piece of text being repeated.

It may not be a literary masterpiece, but the book gives a powerful description of what different poisons are, how they work and how their impact can be reduced. We come across different sorts of poisons and poisonings, whether they be accidental or intentional, in the workplace or in the home. There is often a huge amount of detail - perhaps too much detail for a book that isn't a textbook, when Timbrell repeatedly tells us how different poisons work.

I am sure Timbrell knows his facts on poisons - certainly more so than he knows his plays. He tells us that one of Agatha Christie's plays was called "Arsenic and Old Lace". Mistaking this classic American dark comedy by Joseph Kesselring for one of Christie's lumbering murder mysteries seems a little like confusing aconite with orange juice.

There are a couple of little niggles on the presentation that perhaps reflect Timbrell's experience as a textbook writer, rather than a popular science writer. New terms are in bold to show they appear in the glossary - for 99 per cent of readers this is just an irritation. Worse is his habit of over-using brackets (parentheses) to re-phrase something or explain it (as I have just done twice). One a single page he goes through a list of things like battery acid, kettle descaler etc. with a bracketed description after each, only to do exactly the same thing for the same list of chemicals further down the page. To make matters worse, one of his lists identifies battery acid as hydrochloric acid, the other as sulphuric.

It all helps to break the flow and highlight the fact this book hasn't got enough of the story-telling page turning flow of a good popular science book. It's probably not necessary for the author to labour the fact that poisons can be natural as well as synthetic so much - the sort of person who thinks everything natural is good and everything synthetic is bad is very unlikely to read a book like this. There's lots of good stuff in here, but the degree to which you've got to skip read chunks to avoid falling asleep implies that the editor should have been braver and taken big slices out. For the specific aspect of chemical elements that have poisoned people you might be better off with John Emsley's The Elements of Murder, but it's hard to beat this book despite its faults as an overview across the field.

Only in hardback.

Reviewed by Jo Reed

DISCLAIMERS

This site has no connection with Popular Science magazine or other sites and publications with a similar name.

Much of the content of this site is written by popular science writers or friends of popular science writers. Inevitably many of the reviews in such a small community are written by or about someone we know. We always aim to be impartial in our reviews, but there is a connection which we need make clear, as there is no intention to deceive. The content of any review or article is solely the opinion of the author and should not be read or understood on any other basis. The site exists to promote popular science writing and popular science authors and for this reason should be considered promotional material, just as the editorial reviews in an online bookshop or the blurb on the back of a book should be considered promotional.

The website should not be eaten or used where it can come into contact with water.

Disagree with our review? Want to comment on a feature? Contact us at info@ popularscience.co.uk - have your say!

Part of the site