Susanne Antonetta is the pen name of Suzanne Paola (born September 29, 1956, in Georgia),[1] an American poet and author who is most widely known for her book Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir.
Paola was raised among the New Jersey Pine Barrens, which she later used as the setting for Body Toxic, in one of the most environmentally contaminated counties in the United States.
Paola writes about how the poisoned landscape of her New Jersey childhood devastated her body, causing cardiac arrhythmia, seizures, severe allergies, and sterility.
She recounts the story of the Radium Girls, details aspects of the frequent nuclear and industrial waste debacles in New Jersey, and relates these events to her family and neighbors.
Vignettes depicting colossal man-made environmental disasters are woven into her story, accenting the recurrent medical catastrophes she endured, including endometriosis, rampant thyroid tumors, a quadruplet pregnancy (without fertility drugs) that ended in miscarriage, numerous growths on her liver and ovarian cysts that necessarily had to be removed, alongside repeated bouts of manic-depression.