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 found the following review helpful:


In the Absence of Corporate Conscience  Jul 23, 2004 By Judith Poole
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 found the following review helpful:


Good, Balanced  Feb 25, 2005 By Randy Given
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.

6 of 7 found the following review helpful:


Compelling, Informative AND Inspiring  Mar 03, 2003
I am not a scientist, but I have practiced environmental law, as a regulator, for the past 14 years. Sad to say, what Dr. Davis represents as the roadblocks to a safer and healthier environment for all the earth's inhabitants are, largely, my experiences too. However, this is not a book of all doom and gloom. In the end, on the issues where there are individuals who refuse to give up, or be coopted, justice often prevails -- we just needlessly cause damage in our delay to get there! Dr. Davis is clearly one of those individuals born to fight and lead! You will be inspired.

13 of 17 found the following review helpful:


smoke gets in your eyes  May 30, 2003 By G. B. Talovich
I never saw my grandfather, Rade Talovich. He died several years before I was born.

After he emigrated from Serbia, he spent his life working steam shovels in the factories of Donora, Pennsylvania. He died suddenly in his fifties, a few months after the killer smog of 1948.

I have never visited Donora. After he left, my father, Peter, never wanted to see the town again. We lived in LA, about as far from Donora as you can get in the continental USA.

I remember the whole class crying as we sat on the football field during PE class at Pasadena High. We were sitting because the air was so bad we were not allowed to play; we were crying because the air hurt so much. We would try to see Mt Wilson, a few miles right behind our school. Usually we couldn't.
(Every time this happened, there would always be a couple guys who passed the time chatting about what kind of cars they wanted. Inevitably big powerful ones.)

My father never really told us what happened to our grandfather. Now, reading When Smoke Ran Like Water, I know more about it. Who needs Stephen King when you can get scared out of your mind by the solid facts about the air in your lungs?

Dr Davis states her cases clearly and meticulously. It is a pleasure to read her beautifully sculptured sentences. I burst out laughing more than once at her nicely planted pronouncements. (Also, in this era of baldly explicit descriptions, it is nice to read her respectful ¡§G-d¡¨)

The focus of the book is pollution, so there are a few avenues that could bear further exploration. She examines the important problem of breast cancer from the angle of pollutants. In Diet For A New America, John Robbins documented the role of eggs in causing breast cancer. Robbins also discusses the effect of hormones in meat animals on hapless children in Puerto Rico, a facet only lightly touched on by Davis.

The guilt of polluting companies is beyond doubt, and almost beyond comprehension. However, I was also encouraged by Davis's resolute foundation in democracy. She places a portion of the ultimate responsibility right where it belongs: in each family, in each individual's decisions about what products to use or not to use. Without this reminder, this treatise could slip into polemic. Now we have to make sure that each person knows the facts with which to make wise decisions.

Now that I have read this book, I am disturbed by an idea. My father, born the same year as Dr Davis' uncle Len (they must have known each other), died in his 60s, at about the same age as his mother, Mildred Kasonovich Talovich. Early generations of the family were roaring and raring well into their 90s. Could the toxic atmosphere of their town robbed my elders of decades of life?

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