PROVIDENCE --
Devra Davis says that for years no one wanted to talk about the cold, still day in October 1948 when all the soot spewing from three giant steel mills settled down on her little town of Donora, Pa., and killed 18 people.
Donora was so dirty on good days that grass didn't grow and people had to repeatedly wash their walls.
So when a temperature inversion trapped the soot at ground level and half the town became sick, townspeople thought it was just another bad day. The high school football team played its game even though it was so murky you couldn't see the ball on long passes.
What happened afterward was just as strange. Investigators were run out of town. The companies and many workers didn't want to know what happened. The results of a health survey were destroyed in a fire. Settlements with victims' families were kept secret.
Davis made the Donora disaster the centerpiece of a book released on Thursday that condemns the role many industries have played in causing pollution problems and then thwarting efforts to regulate them or even do adequate research.
During three days at Brown University last week, Davis gave readings from her book, When Smoke Ran Like Water -- Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, swapped stories with environmental researchers at Brown and fired up students to solve the nation's ills.
The book is attracting glowing reviews. John Topping, president of the Climate Institute, said, "This is simply the best book on the environment since Silent Spring." According to one source, 5,000 copies sold by week's end.
After answering questions for a half-hour at the end of one presentation Friday, Davis turned to one of her hosts, Prof. Phil Brown, and said, "We're not getting any younger. It's nice to see the students get excited so they can carry these efforts on."
Minutes later, she got a call from Sir Crispin Tickell, environmental adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying he'd be happy to write an endorsement when the book is released in England.
For three decades, Davis has worked and done international research as an epidemiologist. She's a former scholar-in-residence at the National Academy of Science and adviser to President Bill Clinton, a delegate to the Johannesburg Summit on the Environment, and a visiting professor at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Medicine at Carnegie Mellon University.
Yes, the United States is cleaning up its pollution problems, but corporations have done some terrible things in the past, and it's important that people know, so they don't keep happening, Davis said.
"There's sort of a desperate determination to focus on the bottom line -- to ignore some problems because the implications are too grave," Davis said.
The weak response by business and political leaders in the United States to global warming is a prime example, Davis said.
She writes of the big automobile companies fighting against altering engines to accept unleaded fuel, despite studies showing leaded fuel was poisoning the country. She discusses why so many studies of breast cancer have failed to find a connection with pesticides. And she tells the story of how 20,000 Costa Rican men became sterile after working with a pesticide that had been banned in the United States.
She talked of Mary Amdur, a brilliant young chemist whose father died of lung cancer. He didn't smoke, but he worked in a coal plant. Amdur began studying effects of chronic air pollution in the early 1950s. She found 30 days of exposure to the same smoke that the people in Donora breathed every day caused permanent damage to the lungs of guinea pigs.
At an academic conference, two men confronted Amdur on an elevator and told her not to present her findings, Davis said. She did, nevertheless. And by the time she returned to Boston, she found her job at Harvard had been eliminated. No explanation was offered.
"For much of her career, industry groups continued to discredit and debunk her findings," Davis said. "Other researchers saw what happened to her and that affects what they do."
Davis said too many times industries raise objections and confuse government regulators so that protective measures aren't taken with many dangerous chemicals and workplace practices.
"The decision not to take an action is an action," she said. "If we decide to do nothing, that is a mistake."
Davis's book also praises industries that are doing good.
George and Laura Bush's Texas ranch recycles wastewater and incorporates solar heat and a groundwater cooling system.
The Hackensack Medical University, one of New Jersey's largest hospitals, is following the lead of two big donors, Don and Deirdre Imus, to switch to "green" cleaning products.
Eight major carpet companies recently agreed to a plan to recycle millions of tons of old carpets to keep them out of landfills.
In a talk to one group at Brown, Davis said, "A good democracy depends on an informed public. But when it comes to toxics, it's hard to be informed. This stuff is complicated. That's why we scientists need to do more."
Later, Davis explained that she has been talking about the nation's public health problems for decades and written numerous papers and reports. The idea of writing a book came to her when she became trapped in an elevator in Greece during an earthquake in 1999.
"I realized you can't assume you are going to be around forever," she said. "I decided I was born to do this."
"So many women I love have dealt with cancer and died," Davis said. "The Talmud says you must repent the day before you die. But how do you know what day you're going to die? That means you must repent every day."
