How to Not Get Poisoned in America

Summary

April 30, 2025 How to Not Get Poisoned in America The minute I saw that Robert Kennedy Jr., a notorious disease-loving health crank, was going to be responsible for the nation’s health—and the health of its food supply—I knew who I had to call. Deborah Blum is the woman who literally wrote the book on the history of US food regulations. In 2018, she published “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century,” a fascinating and occasionally harrowing account of how the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906—which led to the establishment of the FDA—came to pass. Blum is an expert on poison; her 2011 book “The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York” also contends with poison, intentional and unintentional, and the law. Blum is also the director of the Knight Science Journalism Center at MIT during a particularly difficult time for science journalism. Under an administration ravenous for deregulation, which, when it comes to food safety, hits us right in the gut, I wanted to talk to Blum about how she’s processing the news; the Wild West of pre-regulation American food, and our chances of returning to that unhappy state; and what it’s like to write about science in the face of administration hell-bent on dismantling the U.S.’s world-class scientific establishment. Along the way, we touched on low-dose toxicology, attitudes in the US about money, food, and individualism, and the impossibility of being an informed consumer in an age of disinformation. It was a fascinating conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity (and to fit into an email). I guess my first question is: What does it feel like to be a science journalist right now, and to be someone who teaches science journalists? We’re seeing a federal administration that’s spreading misinformation about science left and right. I'm thinking vaccines, or the autis...