According to the 1993 book Our Stolen Future, the "chemical age" came about after World War II. By 1982 there were 350 times more synthetic chemical products than there were in 1940, and billions of pounds of man-made chemicals "pouring into the environment."
1993 年出版的《失竊的未來》一書指陳，二次大戰後，「合成化學時代」來臨，從 1940 到 1982 年，化學合成物的生產已擴增了 350 倍，數十億磅的各色粉末大量添加在各種工業產品中。