Choked : life and breath in the age of air pollution / Beth Gardiner.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2019Copyright date: ©2019Description: 290 pages ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780226495859
- 022649585X
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 615.902 G221 | Available | 33111009160256 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Nothing is as elemental, as essential to human life, as the air we breathe. Yet around the world, in rich countries and poor ones, it is quietly poisoning us.
Air pollution prematurely kills seven million people every year, including more than one hundred thousand Americans. It is strongly linked to strokes, heart attacks, many kinds of cancer, dementia, and premature birth, among other ailments. In Choked , Beth Gardiner travels the world to tell the story of this modern-day plague, taking readers from the halls of power in Washington and the diesel-fogged London streets she walks with her daughter to Poland's coal heartland and India's gasping capital. In a gripping narrative that's alive with powerful voices and personalities, she exposes the political decisions and economic forces that have kept so many of us breathing dirty air. This is a moving, up-close look at the human toll, where we meet the scientists who have transformed our understanding of pollution's effects on the body and the ordinary people fighting for a cleaner future.
In the United States, air is far cleaner than it once was. But progress has failed to keep up with the science, which tells us that even today's lower pollution levels are doing real damage. And as the Trump administration rips up the regulations that have brought us where we are, decades of gains are now at risk. Elsewhere, the problem is far worse, and choking nations like China are scrambling to replicate the achievements of an American agency--the EPA--that until recently was the envy of the world.
Clean air feels like a birthright. But it can disappear in a puff of smoke if the rules that protect it are unraveled. At home and around the world, it's never been more important to understand how progress happened and what dangers might still be in store. Choked shows us that we hold the power to build a cleaner, healthier future: one in which breathing, life's most basic function, no longer carries a hidden danger.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-284) and index.
Prologue. Inhale: the meaning of a breath -- Holding our breath. The measure of a lung: charting pollution's power ; Ground zero: Delhi's health emergency ; 9,416: living London's diesel disaster ; Air you can chew : Poland and the price of coal ; Cows, almonds, asthma: crisis in the San Joaquin Valley ; Home fires burning: a paradigm shifts -- Coming up for air. To change a nation: the story of America's Clean Air Act ; Reluctant innovators: air and the automakers ; Inch by inch: L.A.'s long road ; Live from the "airpocalypse": China's next revolution ; "To whom belongs the city?": Berlin looks beyond cars -- Epilogue. Exhale: what comes next.
"Air pollution prematurely kills seven million people every year, including more than one hundred thousand Americans. It is strongly linked to strokes, heart attacks, many kinds of cancer, dementia, and premature birth, among other ailments. In Choked, Beth Gardiner travels the world to tell the story of this modern-day plague, taking readers from the halls of power in Washington and the diesel-fogged London streets she walks with her daughter to Poland's coal heartland and India's gasping capital. In a gripping narrative that's alive with powerful voices and personalities, she exposes the political decisions and economic forces that have kept so many of us breathing dirty air. This is a moving, up-close look at the human toll, where we meet the scientists who have transformed our understanding of pollution's effects on the body and the ordinary people fighting for a cleaner future."--Page [2] of cover.