It started in 1934, with a PR crisis.
During the crucial early weeks of pregnancy, when fetal cells knit themselves into a brain and organs and fingers and lips, a steady flow of man-made chemicals pulses through the umbilical cord. Scientists once believed that the placenta filtered out most of these pollutants, but now they know that is not the case. Along with nutrients and oxygen, numerous synthetic substances travel to the womb, permeating the fetus’s blood and tissues. This is why, from their very first moments of life, every American newborn carries a slew of synthetic chemicals in their body.
Crucially, many of these chemicals have never been tested for safety. Of those that have, some are known to cause cancer or impede fetal development. Others alter the levels of hormones in the womb, causing subtle changes to a baby’s brain and organs that may not be apparent at birth but can lead to a wide variety of ailments, including cancer, heart disease, infertility, early puberty, reduced IQ, and neurological disorders such as ADHD. How did we end up in this situation, where every child is born pre-polluted? The answer lies in America’s fervor for the synthetic materials that, beginning in the mid-20th century, reshaped our entire society—and in the cunning methods that chemical makers used to ensure their untrammeled spread.
It began in 1934, when the munitions company DuPont was struggling to rescue its reputation. A new blockbuster book, Merchants of Death, argued that the company had unduly influenced America’s decision to enter World War I, then reaped exorbitant profits by supplying its products to America’s enemies and Allied forces alike. Meanwhile, a congressional probe had uncovered a bizarre plot—allegedly funded by DuPont and other companies that opposed the New Deal—to overthrow the U.S. government and install a Mussolini-style dictatorship. Almost overnight, DuPont became a national pariah.
In response, the company hired a legendary PR consultant who concluded that there was only one way DuPont could escape the controversy: by transforming itself in the public’s mind from a maker of deadly munitions into a source of marvelous inventions that benefited the general public. In 1938, the company debuted the first of these revolutionary materials: nylon, which could be spun into fibers “as strong as steel, as fine as the spider’s web,” a DuPont executive declared at the unveiling. The company’s wildly popular exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair featured a shapely Miss Chemistry rising out of a test tube in a nylon evening gown and stockings. When nylon stockings went on sale in 1940, they sold out almost immediately.
But it wasn’t until World War II that synthetics really took off. Faced with shortages of natural materials such as steel and rubber, the U.S. government spent huge sums developing synthetic materials and expanding the assembly lines of chemical companies so that they could produce the quantities needed for global warfare.
