When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution [Hardcover]

Devra Lee Davis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465015212 | ISBN-13: 978-0465015214 | Publication Date: November 5, 2002 | Edition: 1

In When Smoke Ran Like Water, the world-renowned epidemiologist Devra Davis confronts the public triumphs and private failures of her lifelong battle against environmental pollution. By turns impassioned and analytic, she documents the shocking toll of a public-health disaster--300,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and Europe from the effects of pollution--and asks why we remain silent. She shows how environmental toxins contribute to a broad spectrum of human diseases, including breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and emphysema--all major killers--and in addition how these toxins affect the health and development of the heart and lungs, and even alter human reproductive capacity.But the battle against pollution is not just scientific. For Davis, it's personal: pollution is what killed many in her family and forced the others, survivors of the 1948 smog emergency in Donora, Pennsylvania, to live out their lives with damaged health. She vividly describes that episode and also makes startling revelations about how the deaths from the London smog of 1952 were falsely attributed to influenza; how the oil companies and auto manufacturers fought for decades to keep lead in gasoline, while knowing it caused brain damage; behind-the-scenes accounts of the battle to recognize breast cancer as a major killer; and many other battles. When Smoke Ran Like Water makes a devastating case that our approaches to public health need to change.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Davis, one of the world's leading epidemiologists and researchers on environmentally linked illness, writes about her lifelong battle against environmental pollution in strong prose, underlined with some horrifying stories. With a special emphasis on air pollution and its long-term effects, Davis anecdotally talks about some of the most infamous smogs and fogs of all time, including the Donora Fog (October 26, 1948) that left a small zinc-factory town in Pennsylvania blanketed in a thick, toxic fog for over a week. "Within days, nearly half the town would fall ill" and within one 24-hour period 18 people had died. She argues that these incidents are underreported because the industries responsible for the pollutants are often powerful corporations or the major employer in these small towns. Research into the long-term effects of pollution, such as breast and testicular cancer, reveals that people in the Northeast (including Long Island and Connecticut) and in California have a higher incidence of serious illnesses. Most importantly, Davis brings to the fore the long-lasting effects of growing up and living in a polluted atmosphere, clearly demonstrating that "people living in areas with the dirtiest air had the highest risk of dying." She sounds the warning bell loud and clear: the threat to public health is real. This is an enlightening, engrossing read (with an intro by Gaynor, a leading oncologist at the Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York City), which should be on the shelf of anyone who cares about the environment and wants to learn more about policy, health and politics; Davis weaves all of these together with grace.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Epidemiologist Davis documents the struggle to force the auto, oil, coal, and chemical industries to come to terms with the environmental consequences of their unregulated release of toxic substances into our air and water-in particular high cancer rates, heart and lung diseases, infertility, brain damage, and death. She sets the stage by describing the perpetual health problems and deaths in her home town of Donora, PA, caused by toxins from coal, steel, and zinc processing. Her accounts of the devastating black smog that blanketed the town for several days in 1948 and other black smogs in Liege, London, and Los Angeles reveal the global nature of the problem. This is an expos on how industrial polluters deceived the public, belittled scientists and academics, and pressured government agencies to stifle regulations. Davis acknowledges that today's environmental regulations are a tribute to those who fought the polluters and demanded change, but the battle continues. Recommended for all environmental and public health collections; for additonal coverage of this issue, see also Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner's Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution and Sandra Steingraber's Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment.
Irwin Weintraub, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (November 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465015212
• ISBN-13: 978-0465015214
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,206,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A vividly written account of the battle agains air pollution, November 9, 2003

By 

Robert Adler "science writer & author" (Santa Rosa, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Smoke Ran Like Water (Hardcover)

The headline in today's paper reads, "EPA drops clean-air action against plants." It goes on to say that after weakening the Clean Air Act for future power plant expansions, the Bush administration has now dropped enforcement actions already in progress against dozens of coal powered plants suspected of illegally pumping thousands of tons of pollution into the air. The headline makes it clear why we need more people like Devra Davis and more books like When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution.

Davis, who holds a masters degree in public health, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, an adviser to the World Health Organization, and an original researcher into the impacts of air pollution on health worldwide. When Smoke Ran Like Water is her personal take on how letting businesses dump toxins into the air people breathe and the water they drink has resulted in illness-racked lives and hundreds of thousands of deaths throughout history. The story gets personal when she describes the clot of industrial pollution that settled over her hometown of Donora, Pennsylvania on October 26, 1948, sickening half the town and killing eighteen people outright. Like the deadly smogs that killed 12,000 people in London in 1952, the Donora deaths were swept under the carpet by officials; keeping the factories running was deemed far more important than a few "extra" deaths.

The really shocking point Davis makes, however, is that such dramatic events represent just a tiny fraction of the illness, disability, and premature death caused by the long-term impact of chronic air pollution. Although the physician-philosopher Maimonaides warned of the health effects of breathing polluted air 800 years ago, it was not until the 1970s that epidemiologists convincingly proved that even low levels of pollution cause measurable increases in illness and premature deaths. By now they can pin it down to a deadly equation-whenever air pollution increases by so many millionths of a gram per cubic meter of air, there will be so many premature deaths. The numbers are staggering-Davis reports that air pollution has caused one million early deaths in the United States since 1980, and in China causes an estimated one million early deaths each year. Equally alarming are the increasing presence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in air and water, with documented impacts on human reproduction and development.

Davis also details how major corporations have fought-and, as the headlines show, continue to fight--to be allowed to pollute. They have blocked legitimate research, funded biased research, and used every tactic including intimidating researchers to keep the public from understanding the impact of pollution. They've smeared even the most careful and reputable research, published in leading, peer-reviewed scientific journals, as "junk science," and continue to lobby, with mounting success, for the right to continue to pump thousands of tons of chemicals into the atmosphere.

Davis, of course, provides far more scientific and historical details, and tells many fascinating stories, as she traces the battle over the air we breathe up to the present. The book is vividly written and involved me both intellectually and emotionally from the first page to the last. If you care about the health of children, older people, and future generations, or simply want to know what's really going on in the wars between those who want to pollute our environment and those who want to protect it, When Smoke Ran Like Water is a great place to start.

Robert Adler, Ph.D...

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the Absence of Corporate Conscience, July 23, 2004

By 

Judith Poole (Watertown, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (Hardcover)

In the Absence of Corporate Conscience

By
Judith Poole


Davis, Devra. (2002). When Smoke Ran Like Water: tales of environmental deception and the battle against pollution. NY: Basic Books. $26.00. Available, Minuteman Library

In this compelling volume, Davis casts a brilliant spotlight on historic precedents and modern events that pit public health against corporate welfare. With a clear focus, she addresses the history of industrial and automobile generated air pollution, the challenges and complexities of epidiemiological research, and problems generated when decisions and decision makers are politically motivated. She weaves these strands together in a personal narrative that is at once rivetting and convincing.
The impact of environmental challenges on the health of children, older people, and future generations is made evident. The reader comes away with greater understanding, aware of what's really going on in the trenches. The age old conflict between those who think nothing of polluting our environment and those who work hard attempting to protect it only escalates. When Smoke Ran Like Water may be just the antidote to the apathy among those of us who feel overwhelmed. Everywhere one looks, decades of hard won environmental protections are dismantled while, in the language of doublespeak, the administration claims ?progress?.
In this volume, we learn about damage caused by air borne toxic substances. Like a Hollywood box office thriller, we learn that deep pockets allow industry-mounted
campaigns. Expensive paid experts are hired to dispute every finding, willing to intimidate researchers with the audacity to conduct research that might condemn the corporate approach to doing buisness. Davis elucidates how unregulated release of toxic substances results in high cancer rates, heart and lung diseases, infertility, brain damage, and death. Davis? writes with style and ease. She enlivens while she informs, and manages a rare feat, able to clearly elucidate detailed scientific concepts clearly, without oversimplifying.
Davis? clarity and passion is illustrated in these quotes:
On the dangers of leaded gasoline, which industry sources succeeded in insisting was perfectly safe:
Why were the hazards of lead from gasoline not better understood? For several hundred years, heated or solid forms of lead had been known to injure, maim, and kill workers. As a heavy metal, ... lead chemically competes with and replaces calcium throughout the body. Calcium is one of those critical materials for life that gets to go wherever it wants, except when lead gets there first. In the bones, the brain, and the blood and throughout the nervous system, all of which depend on calcium, lead can trigger irreparable damage. (p 65.)

On the urgent need to act even in the absence of absolute proof:

By the time that we are able to learn whether [these] concerns are well founded, ... most of [us] will no longer be around. It all comes down to a question of what risks you are willing to accept. Is it better to err on the side of protecting public health, or on the side of promoting industrial growth? There is no free lunch. (p 142.)

On the accumulation of toxins in the body:


How long do some pesticides stay in the body? ... [In] an unintended experiment [between] 1991 to 1993... a group of eight scientists lived inside [Biosphere II,] a completely enclosed environment in the Arizona desert, [that] relied on recycled wastes and its own internal production system for food. Roy Walford, the physician who lived through this experiment, reported that after a few months, pesticide residues began to appear in the resident's urine, as the average person lost nearly 20 percent of his or her weight, much of which was fat. This release of old fat yielded a cascade of stored pesticides they had been acquired years earlier. (p 169.)

Judith is author of The Little Grounding Book and More Than Meets the Eye: Energy. (...)

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good, Balanced, February 25, 2005

By 

Randy Given (Manchester, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (Hardcover)

This is a good and balanced book, especially considering the vested interests of the author (her life!). Too often, these types of books turn into little more than political rants. This is not the case here. Sure, there are political actions and inactions that are discussed, but no personal attacks.

There is not a tremendous amount of scientific data in this book, but I did not expect it. I was not looking for a tome of information. The author delivers on her personal and professional experiences in what is the best way possible. If only we could get others to follow her lead.