If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if repeated exposures to small amounts of organochlorines — pesticide residues now found in our water, food and bodies — were silently raising the frequency of serious birth defects and slowly degrading our reproductive health, would anyone notice? Epidemiologist and former scholar in residence at the National Academy of Sciences Devra Davis has noticed, and she sets forth a blistering account of her observations in When Smoke Ran Like Water.Davis makes the point at the outset: When injustice occurs someone must recognize and record it, someone must count for the record what has transpired, lest the events become muted and the perpetrators not held accountable — the banality of evil. She thus begins her very readable account in Donora, Penn., where in 1948 toxins emitted from the local steel and zinc factories were trapped in the valley due to an atmospheric inversion. Bodies began piling up at the morgue as the factories continued to belch out poison at full tilt. Local factory owners and the pliant local media attributed the event to a "killer fog" — as if this were somehow an act of divine mystery rather than thoughtless industry. Davis then skillfully shows how this theme was repeated throughout the 20th century. How, for example, a few would attempt to "spin" breast cancer (a disease that has increased 43 percent since 1973) as the disease of selfish careerist women who refuse to have children, rather than the result of insidious chemicals deposited courtesy of corporate polluters.
Davis' insights as a scientist, historian and former policy adviser make for a cogent and indispensable narrative, but she is careful to give credit to her predecessors and describe the vicious campaigns waged by industry to marginalize and silence them.
Our environment has silently become toxic, but people such as Devra Davis are counting the cost, and pseudo-grassroots corporate fronts, corporate lobbyists and right-wing think tanks will not silence them. This is a courageous piece of work and a must read for any concerned citizen of planet earth.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2003.
