Reader Responses to
When Smoke Ran Like Water

---

Date: 01/18/2003
Subject: Bill Moyers Show

I was so very touched by your presentation on last night's TV show.

I also felt somewhat connected, being from Pittsburgh, having a similar middle name, Devera, and coming from a Pittsburgh Steel Company family, (The Levinson Steel Co...the only Jewish one in Pittsburgh).

The company started when my grandfather came to Pittsburgh from Russia and began collecting scrap, iron and junk with his horse and wagon....one of those miracle stories from the past.

I left Pittsburgh in 1949 at the age of 18, not because of the smog, but because I feel in love with a young Rabbinic Student from Cincinnati. We met at Emma Kaufman Camp in Harmony, Pa. in 1948. I was a counselor in training, still having one more year at Taylor Allderdice, while he was the student Camp Rabbi.

Upon his ordination we moved to Boston and have been living here for almost 53 years. I didn't mean to get into my life...it all just spilled out.

I wanted to congratulate you on your wonderful life and fantastic achievements.

Very Sincerely Yours,
Netta G—


Dear Netta:

Shabbat Shalom...and thank you for these kinds words. I will be speaking at the Cambridge Forum in Boston March 12 and hope you might be able to come. My Zadde also was a scrap dealer/horse drawn peddler, at one point in his life...

Thank you for sharing your experiences/observations....we are hoping to add to our web site to include such touching remembrances...


Devra

---

Date: 01/18/2003
Subject: Breast Cancer Correlation

Hi,

I saw your interview on Bill Moyer's NOW (PBS) tonight. Your discussion with the interviewer on correlating breast cancer with solvents reminded me of a Vietnamese friend of mine. She is a breast cancer survivor who works part time in the cosmetology field (specifically doing Manicures and pedicures where a lot of solvents are used).

If Vietnamese women normally have a low incidence of breast cancer, but those who work in the cosmetology field have a high incidence of cancer I would imagine that this would offer a correlation of cancer with solvents?

Best Regards,
Kevin H—


Dear Kevin:

Thank you for writing to me. You are correct to think about this association.

Cosmetologists have a higher risk of breast cancer....and the things they work with are certainly implicated. We need to do more research on this and to have a greater understanding and awareness of the risks in these and other professions.


Devra

---

Date: 01/17/2003
Subject: PVC

Dear Ms. Davis,

Polyvinyl chloride is one of the most widely used consumer plastics. Pure PVC, as I understand it, is a hard and brittle plastic. To make it flexible so that it can be used in fabric sheets, toys and other plastic products, plasticizers are added.

In time, probably several years or less, the plasticizers "evaporate" out of the PVC. One possible use of PVC fabric is the dashboard covering of automobiles. Have you ever noticed the film that accumulates on the inside of the windshield? Is this just road grime or is it the plasticizer from the PVC ?

We spend a lot of time in cars. If this film is plasticizer material and we are breathing it, often for several hours a day, is it harmful ? No doubt the plastics manufacturers, auto companies and the Federal Government will say it either doesn't exist or is harmless.

There are several plasticizers used. Could you check the MSDS sheets for them and see if they are listed carcinogens?

Sincerely,
Robert F—

---

Date: 01/21/2003
Subject: NOW with Bill Moyers

Dear Ms. Davis,

I listened to the interview of you on Bill Moyer's excellent program, NOW, on Friday night. You are an impressive lady. You are not only beautiful on the outside, but show great inner beauty also.

Good luck on your noble mission. Before becoming an attorney, now specializing in civil rights discrimination law, I was a journalist with a passion for environmental causes. How I would have liked to interview you!


Sincerely,
Tom W—

---

Date: 01/22/2003
Subject: Toxins

Dear Dr. Davis,

Yesterday I began reading your book, "When Smoke Ran Like Water," I am so excited to have found it--the information is fascinating.

I would like to ask whether you could direct me to any current research studies regarding pollution/environmental toxins' correlation to emotional and/or neurological disorders. I grew up in Elizabeth Township in the Monongahela Valley. I left the area for college at 18 and from there moved to Washington, DC. I am now 35 years old.

Last summer I determined I was carrying several heavy metals in my body including one that is particular to steelmaking, coalmining and ironworking--Manganese. I had been struggling for over a decade with increasingly severe health issues. Prior to ridding the metals I was dealing with some very noticeable symptoms including Parkinson-like tremors.

I think this issue is important, but many around me dismiss it. I would like to find others who believe in the connection and serious effects from industry's waste on health and mortality.

I would also like to find a way to be participating and creating/sending a message for awareness.

Sincerely,
Miriam B—


Dear Miriam

Interestingly, a family member of mine was taken to the hospital this past weekend. She apparently has pneumonia in one lung, and severe scarring was found in both lungs as well. (Details still to be determined.) The pulmonary specialist inquired about her work environment... I am very curious to find out more as well…


Devra

---

Date: 01/31/2003
Subject: Mentor

Dear Dr. Davis,

Your work is so important. I consider you a mentor - someone who I can look up to and admire your courage and your work.

Have you noticed that outspoken environmentalists/activists seem to be disproportionately female?

Thanks,
Sandy R—

---

Date: 02/10/2003
Subject: Air Pollution

Dear Devra,

I just listened to your program on the Daine Rehm show. Air pollution is a far more serious global problem than most people and the media recognize. (Please see http://www.eco-systems.org/air_pollution_and_dying_forests.htm )

For the past 32 years I have been observing and documenting the steadily worsening damage of chronic, widespread air pollution on trees and forests. The effects of this chronic pollution is accumulating in the soils and is greatly shortening the life of trees and making them far more susceptible to insects and disease or outright death from no obvious cause. I became so concerned that I gave up my domestic and international forestry consulting to develop new techniques and technology to encourage less polluting forms of transportation.

Thank you for your good work to make the public more aware.

Gerry H—

---

Date: 02/10/2003
Subject: Pittsburgh

Dear Devra,

I heard your interview about the Donora smoke (or smog) disaster on the Diane Rehm show. I lived in Pittsburgh at that time and was well aware of the event. You spoke of a Sister of the Convent of St. Joseph. Coincidentally, yesterday I received noticed of the death, Saturday, February 8, of a friend who was a native of Donora. She had left before that time and would have been unaffected, but I think some of her family lived there.

I had a cousin who worked in the Donora mill, and died in the early fifties, probably around the age of forty. I also worked as a food supervisor at several mills in the area and was well aware of the problems of rotating shifts, though none of the male members of my family worked in them.

I'm going now to look for the book.

Sincerely,
M—

---

Date: 02/10/2003
Subject: Pittsburgh

Dear Devra,

Thank you for the important, interesting material about diesel pollution. I hope many of our "decision-makers' become aware of the problem and act toward reducing particulate pollution.

I am curious about how much switching to hydrogen fuel will solve our problems. I believe that generating hydrogen (say by electrolysis of water) requires at least as much energy as the hydrogen can release. If I were a biochemist, I would try to develop bacteria or algae that could generate free hydrogen.

Looking forward to a future of clean air and adequate energy. There's no free lunch.

Thanks again,

Alan S—

---

Date: 02/11/2003
Subject: Suggestions

Dear Devra,

Having read your book, let me say I agree with everything you say. However, in the interest of being more effective, I'd like to make a number of suggestions.

As you are probably aware, the definition of a problem and the terminology we employ frequently affects the solutions we arrive at. For that reason, you might consider some common terms for revision. For example, "WHO-recommended levels of air pollution" might be better phrased as "allowable," "acceptable" or "tolerable." For another: "saving lives" is a misnomer since every life is ultimately "lost" or given up. So, the argument would be stronger if the consequence of certain behavior were more precisely defined. "Premature deaths" and "lives cut short" are really what we are concerned about, though there do seem to be a considerable number of people who consider a fewer number of people to be preferable as long as that number includes themselves. Somehow, the prevalence of premature deaths does not seem sufficient to change certain behaviors. How else to explain the 45,000 annual auto-related fatalities in the U.S. However much we would like to think that it does, other people's mistakes do not much affect individual behavior. It is success that leads to emulation.

I don't think there has been enough focus on the probably consequence of large numbers of people dying prematurely. I do think that there are some people, including those responsible for social policy, who consider the demise of large numbers of Africans and other third world populations a good thing. What they fail to consider is that absent the transmission of skills and social institutions from one generation to the next, as a consequence of premature death because of AIDS or famine, the remaining population will neither thrive or vanish. Rather, without social support, the natural behavior for humans, as it is for all other creatures is predation--to take what they want when they want by force, or die in the process. If humans have nothing anyone else wants to exchange for what they need to survive, their predatory nature is bound to come to the fore. Which brings me to the conclusion that the alternative to economic behavior is not simple subsistence, but predation and waste.

Predators are inherently wasteful. That this fact tends to escape human observation is probably a consequence that organic wastes tend to be scavenged by other organisms. What one creature leaves behind another uses up.

The problem with humans is that, having divined the processes of material accumulation and transformation, much of what we leave behind is not useful, or even poisonous to other creatures. Nevertheless, it is true that "one man's waste is another's treasure" and perhaps the only reason there is little recognition of this fact in our national accounting is because economists, for some reason, have failed to take the fate of waste into account. If, instead of categorizing private production as a positive and governmental enterprise (including building roads and providing public services) as a negative that detracts from the overall accounts, private and public expenditures were calculated in terms of their contribution to public welfare and health, recently and in the future, then any increase in waste (household, hazardous, abandoned or dumped) would provide a clear indication that economic behavior is lessening, rather than increasing. Taking waste into account would also make data more realistic and make it more likely that economic predictions are verified by experience. Economies develop to the extent that waste is avoided.

Furthermore, the haphazard deposition of waste is really an issue of equity. When wastes are not properly processed by those who leave them behind, someone else, probably someone with little expertise, bears the cost of cleaning things (windows, clothes, water, air, lungs) up. Cost-benefit analysis is a valid concept, but only if the costs are borne by those who benefit; not when the costs are shifted elsewhere or to another generation. What has happened to individual human freedom when the waters in lakes, rivers and streams are not fit to drink. The fact that third world waters are not fit to drink either does not justify pollution from industrial sources; it merely testifies to the fact that humans have been negligent of their wastes for a long time.

The "free market" is an attractive concept, in part because in postulating the individual's freedom to choose, it relieves others from being responsible for what they produce and promote. But the fact of the matter is that it isn't possible for an individual to know what he wants of if the choice is good until AFTER the choice has been made. Expectation may or may not be validated by experience and, even though expectation may be based on prior experience, the outcome is never certain. We like to think we know what we want and what will happen, probably because the brain records a sense of satisfaction when events coincide with our expectations, but the fact remains that can't KNOW for certain until AFTER it happens.

Finally, I was particularly taken with your presentation of the work of Lave and Seskin. It reminded me that about 1979 I bought a book on the topic of the health effects of pollution which I then made the mistake of lending to the City Manager of the north Florida city I had recently moved to. A mistake because he never returned it and my arguments for dust abatement and ground-water protection did not make much headway. Since I was particularly impressed by the information presented in that book about the role of dust-born pollutants in such southern afflictions as TB and other pulmonary diseases, I don't know if it is the same. I will try again to locate a copy, now that I have a title to start with. In any event, as you can probably tell, I have considered waste and pollution from an economic perspective for some time. Particularly after I was told by a county engineer that it wasn't "economic to protect the groundwater from the effluent from the county dump" and I came to understand that what he meant was that there was no money to be made if the residents of the surrounding area continued to draw water from their own shallow wells. In other words, economic activity is behavior that involves the use of money and economic development means to increasing transition from self-sufficiency to dependence on the "free market." After much thought I don't accept that definition. From my perspective, economic behavior is characterized by the avoidance of waste by trading and exchanging what we don't want with others. Money makes this process more efficient but it isn't a necessary ingredient. Indeed, as the Third World has amply demonstrated, the presence of money does not guarantee economic development. Sorry to have run on so. Unlike yours, my argument still hasn't achieved the desired coherence.


Sincerely,
Hannah S—

---

Date: 02/12/2003
Subject: Lung Cancer

Dear Devra,

My wife had heard the NPR story about the captioned. I lived in Monessen, Pa from 1963 through1985. My dad died in 1966 at age 52 from lung cancer. He was a healthy, strapping man who never smoked.

To this day, I’m not sure whether he died from asbestos exposure, or exposure to airborne carcinogens. I remember growing up in that area. Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel was the main employer. Everyday the mill poured out tons of “dirty smoke” . We would wash our car in the evening, and by the next morning, it was covered in a reddish dust.

I moved to Northern Michigan in the mid eighties, and people were surprised when I commented on how blue the sky was in this state. Unfortunately, for the 22 years I spent in Monessen, I very seldom saw a blue sky…..

Equally miserable was the condition of the Mon River. I used to fish in the river (the only thing that could live in it were Carp & Catfish). The smell of the river was terrible. Worse yet was the black/brown shoreline.


Sincerely,
S—

---

Date: 02/13/2003
Subject: Roselawn Terrace

Dear Devra,

Your smoke running like water book was one of two I have taken with me on four recent trips for pure intrinsic reading interest. (My wife bought it for me, perhaps because we both happened to live in Pittsburgh in 1948.*)

I have just finished it and enjoyed (if that's the right word) it greatly.

I'm proud that you are here at CMU.

Sincerely,
Robyn D—

*I lived on Roselawn Terrace. We (9-13 year-old boys) used to play pick-up baseball/softball games with other kids and some older people in what was then a field extending from Margaret Morrison adjacent to Forbes--until the muck started rising (usually around 4:15 or so) and obscured everything.

I recall not being surprised to hear on the radio that something awful was going on nearby the first day the Donora smog was mentioned, because even here the muck was unusual--much browner than usual. Probably just a coincidence. I also recall instructions to lock all your windows, go into a closed bathroom if you have trouble breathing, and then a closet if that didn't work. Probably just a retrospective distortion. Ever hear of such public health instructions?

Anyway, while I have seen vivid pictures specific to Donora, and know that the immediate death rate was much high there than elsewhere, my memory is that there was concern and worry throughout the entire city. That could also, however, be a retrospective distortion--especially because I had relatives who lived close to Donora who might have phoned during the immediate period.

---

Date: 02/26/2003
Subject: Donora

Dear Devra:

I had no earthly idea that you were from Donora, PA. That explains a lot. I am currently reading your fantastic book and learning so much and getting confirmed so much of what I thought. The book is just unbelievable, and the characters in Part I are so poignant and eloquent. I think of all the people in Alsen who have been permanently injured or who have died, and their deaths chalked up to "lifestyle." The documentation of obstruction throughout the book is so good. I am currently in the breast cancer section.

If you are planning any promotionals, and I hope that you are, please consider doing one where I live. We would love to host you and help give this book some publicity. It is so deserved!


Sincerely,
F—

---

Date: 04/10/2003
Subject: Environmentally Friendly

Dear Devra:

My question is: do you find that consumers are usually willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products? For example, if cars/trucks published their pollution numbers, would people pay more for less pollution?

I've been a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and they have published some good articles on greener SUVs. The automakers seem strongly opposed to making any changes to fix the SUV loopholes (i.e. poor mileage and tailpipepollution).

UCS has already demonstrated some cost effective changes to light trucks. The sticker price would probably increase a few hundred dollars but the cost savings would pay for it in about 2 years.

When you purchase major applicances, you can usually find an EnergyStar sticker or find out average operating cost for a refrigerator. Maybe we should create a new "EnviroStar" program so that consumers have more information available to find more environmentally-friendly products. For example, cars and trucks would provide pollution numbers and/or percent of recycled products used. Electric companies would print on the back of your statement their current pollution numbers and percent of renewable energy usage.

Sincerely,
J—

---

Date: 04/11/2003
Subject: EPA

Dear Devra:

As an EPA employee, I feel compelled to comment. I've just finished reading your powerful, informative, and insightful book. In many cases, it is also depressing but both you and I are hopeful that positive actions will be taken to protect our environment for future generations. While my EPA responsibilities are no longer directly web related, from 1997 through 2002 I was a member of the EPA's central computer center team supporting the web infrastructure. I was especially pleased to see your recognition of the efforts of EPA employees who support the Agency's web site. Since 1998 EPA's Web Work Group has grown from about 50 people to hundreds. These are the dedicated employees who work in the central computer center, labs, and program offices to provide the public with environmental information.

To date, my 8 year career with EPA has been involved with providing information technology type support. During this time I have worked with and become somewhat familiar with many labs and program offices and their related web applications and content. However, information contained in your book has really filled in many gaps about the Agency itself, what these labs and program offices do, how difficult it is to be a trailblazer in the area of environmental research, and the very direct relationship between pollution and many forms of disease and illness. Your book has also inspired me to read other environmentally related books, particularly Silent Spring.

Thanks again for recognizing the efforts of many dedicated, hard working, EPA employees.

Sincerely,
John B—

---