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Donora's killer pollution among many unheeded warnings

Sunday, March 16, 2003

By Kirk W. Junker

Donora native Devra Davis doesn't ask for environmental health for the environment's sake, nor for the sake of aesthetics, economics, politics, birds, snails, fish or any of the other concerns of environmentalists, lobbyists or regulators.

	E "When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution" By Devra Davis Basic Books ($26)

Instead, in "When Smoke Ran Like Water," she convincingly appeals to our own selfishness by proving that if we make our environment unhealthy, it will make us unhealthy.

Her science, epidemiology, demonstrates that pollution will make you sick or kill you, and if you haven't thought of that, it may be because, as Davis points out, "pollution itself never shows up on death certificates."

Nor is this work just an exercise in finger-pointing. Davis reminds us that we can, and are, often complicit in the environmental deceptions, citing the aftermath of the killer Donora smog of 1948: "Even as citizens from surrounding areas urged that the smog serve as the impetus for cleaning things up, no serious support for this position arose within the town [of Donora] itself."

She reminds us in a number of cases that ignorance is easy. If you don't want to know, don't ask a question.

There is local appeal that makes Davis' point more personally relevant. As a child in the Monongahela River town, she survived the 1948 pollution tragedy that was reported to have killed 20 people. As an epidemiologist, she is concerned that the number of deaths should have included:

Those reported ill who died later, which would raise the number to 50;

Those who moved away, such as her uncle Len, who "carried Donora with him in his heart" and died elsewhere;

The 6,000 sickened by the smog with no record of its permanent damage to their bodies or lives.

If we count the numbers right, as an environmental epidemiologist does by including all of these "extra" sicknesses and deaths, we can begin to see that the health of each of us is affected by the environment.

Davis compares how we counted the "extra" deaths and illnesses of the Donora smog with how we counted the effects of the great 1952 London smog and compares these numbers with the effects of air pollution in cities of China.

She then branches out from recognizable discrete disasters to unrecognized causes that must be responsible for localized increased rates of illnesses such as breast cancer.

When that other well-known local environmentalist, Rachel Carson, published "Silent Spring" in 1962, it woke us from the slumber of environmental disregard. Regard alone is no longer sufficient.

Announced in 1968 and made concrete in the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21 in 1992, the notion of "sustainable development," balancing economic and environmental needs, is here to stay.

Davis' epidemiologist's skill when questioning the counting of illness and deaths makes her at least credible when questioning counting money as well. Her book, a National Book Award finalist, demonstrates that cost-benefit analyses are rabbit-in-the-hat exercises. Depending upon where one sets the limits of what counts as a cost or a benefit will determine whether there was a net cost or a net benefit after the numbers are run.

Twenty people died while the smog covered Donora for three days. How many more died that year from the smog? How many in Donora in 1948 had shorter or incapacitated lives because of those three days?

Does our society think that these people, and those who depended on them, was worth a week of galvanizing steel at the zinc plant? Is that the measure of cost-benefit analysis?

"These statistical patterns of dying are human lives with the tears removed, the literal bodies of evidence," Davis writes.

Despite a life of rigorous research, governmental and scientific credentials (which give her loads of credibility), Davis' environment-by-numbers is easy and enjoyable to read.

Her book is a series of related stories that are well-researched, well-documented and well-written. This narrative form enables a persuasive inductive method to support Davis' conclusions.

In addition to the Donora and London smogs, she reports on other environmental deception by numbers: General Motors and public transportation in Los Angeles; ethyl (a lead additive) gasoline and catalytic converters; geographical patterns of the incidence of breast cancer and the use of pesticides; lead in children's blood; and the worldwide hormonal confusion in male mammals that has dropped sperm counts and the number of babies born -- especially the number of male babies born -- including humans.

From these facts, Davis concludes that we need to make decisions in the presence of uncertainty, and in making those, we should not put the burden of proof or persuasion upon those alleging harm, but upon those disavowing harm.

Davis is a remarkable stylist, mixing anecdotes and anecdotal evidence with science. Her dry wit, rather than dour doom-and-gloom ranting, serves well to present some sad truths.

In Donora, "fumes from the mills, coke ovens, coal stoves, and zinc furnaces were often trapped in the valley by the surrounding hills. They gave us astonishingly beautiful sunsets and plenty of barren dirt fields and hills to play on."

For her, the goal of public health research must be to take us out of the realm of pure knowledge and into an arena in which lives are at stake.

"The basic reason for making forecasts is not to be proven correct. Public health activities should be devised to prevent damage, not to confirm later on that harm has happened."

Enjoy Davis' ability to tell the tales, but you won't breathe easier.

Kirk W. Junker is assistant professor and director of international programs at the Duquesne University School of Law.