Toxic Fear

Pollution Anxieties in the American 1980s

By: Michael Egan

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Paperback | 1 October 2026

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Paperback
278 Pages

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22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6

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Toxic Fear explores how fear shaped the public and private lives of those seeking to make sense of pollution in the 1980s. Driving Egan's interest in environmental anxieties is an exploration of the social and political infrastructure that took shape during the final quarter of the twentieth century. Egan ties the uncertainties rippling through American communities and across mainstream media to the neoliberal project and its deference to self-interest as the only path to prosperity. In the 1980s, that meant less government intervention, lower taxes, more privatization, and fewer controls. Above and beyond any economic or social theory, fear unsettled established ways of American life. Just as toxic chemicals became a prominent feature of the American social and physical landscape in the 1980s, traditional forms of state oversight designed to provide security for its people were eroded. Social problems and public safety were outsourced to individuals. The onus of responsibility moved from government and government agencies to a public that had, in the previous decade, abdicated environmental oversight and the necessary scientific literacy to experts no longer equipped for the job.

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