Sounding the alarm the over global water crisis

Bluewater communications chief Dave Noble reviews Superman’s Not Coming by Erin Brockovich, looking at America’s water crisis and what people can do about it. He notes that the book provides a must-read insight into planet-wide threats posed to our drinking water by chemical pollutants and growing freshwater scarcity.

There’s nothing like a good story. And the latest book by American environmental activist and consumer advocate Erin Brockovich has all the ingredients of a top thriller from dodgy business practices to fraudulent science. 

Entitled ‘Superman’s Not Coming’ (published by Pantheon Books), the book explains in raw detail how people in cities, towns, and villages across the United States are being exposed to potentially hazardous levels of contaminants in the water they drink from their taps and wash with.

“We are amid a water crisis that is beyond anything you can imagine,” Ms. Brockovich writes. The author notes how water is a natural resource we cannot live without, yet it is polluted and over-used to the point that it threatens our health and existence. “

We are in trouble,” she baldly, terrifyingly states, adding that the only ones who can save us are ourselves because not only isn’t Superman coming, but neither are governments or the environmental agencies.

Written in easy-to-understand language, the book takes the reader on a stark journey through a world of plastic pollutants in tap water, of toxic chemicals in everyday products (from shampoos to baby lotions, packaging, and cell phones), and communities exposed to poisoning by lead and PFAS. 

This, all at a time of climate emergency, causing more significant strains on the planet’s water supplies, infrastructure, and economy with more droughts, superstorms, and rising sea levels.

It’s easy to feel a sense of deep despair as you turn page after page filled with scary facts like how chemical pollutants like PFOS or PFOA found in American drinking water systems have been linked to illnesses such as kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. 

Or that ‘over 60 million Americans have been exposed to unsafe drinking water more than once in the past decade, thanks to industrial dumping, farm pollution, and aging infrastructure’, while only about 200 chemicals of the tens of thousands in the marketplace today have been tested for safety.

However, Erin Brockovich succeeds in elevating her book to a whole new level with a clarion call to ordinary citizens to stand up to politicians and polluting corporations. 

She ends it by calling on readers to turn words into action by getting involved in the fight for safer water and supporting the many 'amazing organizations' working on water contamination issues.

Erin Brockovich’s Superman’s Not Coming is published by Pantheon Books