David Steinman
David Steinman, publisher and editor of Healthy
Living magazine, is
an acclaimed environmentalist, consumer health advocate, publisher
and author. His major books include Diet for a Poisoned Planet (1990,
2007), The
Safe Shopper’s Bible (1995), Living Healthy in a
Toxic World (1996), and Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to
Save the Planet Earth from Global Warming Meltdown (2007),
the book that introduces the concept of "Green Patriotism".
Early career
In 1985, David Steinman was writing for the LA
Weekly when he learned that fish in the Santa
Monica Bay were tainted with DDT and PCBs. He began to
wonder how many poisons were in other foods he ate. He started
doing research into the levels of industrial pollutants and
pesticides in human blood and published his team’s findings
in the Journal
of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The resulting
landmark human blood study led to the historic Heal
the Bay movement that cleaned up the Santa Monica Bay.
As a journalist, Steinman won awards for his reporting from the California
Newspaper Publishers Association, Sierra
Club, and the Society
of Professional Journalists (“Best of the West: Environment
and Natural Resources Reporting”).
In 1986, Steinman testified before the Congressional
Subcommittee on Health and the Environment as an expert witness
on the levels of chemical contaminants in the blood of fishermen
and women eating locally caught fish from the Santa Monica Bay.
From 1989 to 1991, Steinman served as a member of the Committee
on Evaluation of Safety of Fishery Products for the National
Academy of Sciences’ Institute
of Medicine. Steinman was also a contributing author of Seafood
Safety (National Academy Press, 1991).
Environmental
Books and Leadership
Steinman’s contributions to Seafood Safety led
to his groundbreaking and controversial book Diet for a Poisoned
Planet (Crown 1990, Ballantine 1992; Thunder’s Mouth
Press 2007). Steinman made hundreds of requests under the Freedom
of Information Act for government studies on food safety and reviewed
tens of thousands of chemical analyses on food. In Diet,
he identified foods with the lowest and highest toxicity levels
by classifying them as green-, yellow- or red-light foods. The
book was received with harsh criticism by sectors of the food industry
as well as by the Food
and Drug Administration and by former surgeon general C.
Everett Koop. The California
Raisin Advisory Board spent over $500,000 on a PR campaign
to directly counteract Steinman’s warnings about industrial
chemical and pesticide residues in raisins.
In 1995, Steinman wrote Safe Shopper’s Bible: A Consumer’s
Guide to Nontoxic Household Products, Cosmetics and Food (Macmillan)
with a foreword by Ralph
Nader, and which included a comprehensive review of products
from pet supplies to carpeting to auto products. He held a press
conference with Ralph
Nader challenging 12 manufacturers and distributors of the
most dangerous products, calling them “the Dirty Dozen” in
an effort to force manufacturers to reformulate their products
or pull them from the market. The following year, Steinman wrote Living
Healthy in a Toxic World: Simple Steps to Protect You and Your
Family from Everyday Chemicals, Poisons, and Pollution (Perigree,
1996) with foreword by TV actress Kirstie
Alley.
Since 1996, Steinman has been an advisory board member for The
Green Guide Institute, a national non-profit, organization
for consumer research and information run by Wendy
Gordon Rockefeller. In 2000, Steinman served as Chairman
of Citizens
for Health, a national nonprofit consumer advocacy group
known as the voice of the natural health consumer. He has also
been featured as a consumer health advocate in the media on TV,
radio and in the press.
On February 8, 2007, Steinman led a press conference at the National
Press Club in Washington, D.C. regarding the presence of
the undisclosed carcinogenic petrochemical 1,4-dioxane in
children's and adult's bath and beauty products. Held jointly
with the Campaign
for Safe Cosmetics and with participation from the Environmental
Working Group, the conference highlighted a range of products
including name-brand baby shampoos and bubble baths that were
found in lab tests to have the carcinogenic petrochemical in
significant amounts, although it was never included in product
labeling. The press conference also called for official FDA oversight
of the cosmetics and personal care products industry, which is
currently self-regulated and subject only to suggestions from
the FDA.
Freedom Press
In 1998, Steinman founded Freedom
Press, a publishing house for books and magazines on health
and the environment. In 1998, he founded and became editor-in-chief
of the popular science-based health magazine The Doctors’ Prescription
for Healthy Living, distributed nationally to health food
stores, doctor’s offices, bookstores and newsstands.
Under Steinman’s leadership, Freedom Press partnered with
many respected traditional and alternative medical professionals
to publish more than two dozen books in health including The
Green Foods Bible (2006) by David Sandoval, Dr. Katz’s
Guide to Prostate Health (2005) by Aaron Katz, M.D., Invisible
Illnesses (2005) by Gloria Gilbere, N.D., D.A.Hom., PhD., The
Healing Power of Flax (2004) by Herb-Joiner Bey, N.D., and Physician
Heal Thyself (2002) by Jordan Rubin.
Through Freedom Press, Steinman also published environmental
titles such as Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability (2006)
by Greg Horn, The Toxic Bedroom (2006) by Walt Bader,
and Surviving Bioterrorism (2003) by the editors of The
Doctor’s Prescription for Healthy Living.
Green Patriotism
In his book Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth
from the Global Warming Meltdown (Thunder’s Mouth
Press, 2007), Steinman introduced and explained the concept of
Green Patriotism to show that the causes of environmentalism and patriotism are
harmonious and interdependent, and to help to counter somewhat
prevalent sentiments that they are incompatible.
According to Steinman, a Green Patriot (the term first used in
connection with America) is someone who practices environmentalism
to strengthen America’s national
security and to protect the health and well-being of all Americans.
David Steinman is the father of three children and lives in California.
Books by David Steinman
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