Author Devra Davis speaks about 'Tales of Environmental DeceptionBy: UTEP Professor
In October 1948 there was a similar tragedy in the little town of Donora, PA. There was an inversion which trapped the pollution from the zinc plant under a thick bank of cold air, and so many died that the town had to transform the school gymnasium into a second morgue. Though only a child at the time of the air inversion in Donora, PA, Dr. Davis reexamines the statistical evidence which lead to the smog related deaths of her fellow Donorans. Those related studies in Donora and London directly challenged one of the central tenets of toxicology at that time- the notion that the greater the dose, the more the damage. The breakthrough was the result of the studies of Prof. Mary Amdur and Dr. Drinker which looked at the effects of non-lethal doses of inhaled toxicants. What they found was pretty straightforward: the more acid in the air, the more damage to the lungs. The smaller the particles involved, the more deeply they penetrated (the lungs) and the greater their impact. They found strikingly similar effects in both animals and people. In December 1953, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Mary Amdur presented those findings… and faced enormous pressure. Her position in the Harvard Lab were she did the research was eliminated, her co-author asked that his name be taken off the study and the Lancet (which had already accepted the paper) never published it and it seems to have disappeared. It is important to note that that research had been financed by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO), and that the company had property rights over the study. Only in 1989 did the Society of Toxicology recognize Amdur’s work with an award for Outstanding Contributions to Industrial Toxiciology. Today in 2005, it is important for all of us living in El Paso, Cd Juarez and Anapra to hear the full story: how ASARCO has known since 1953 that their finest emissions, PM-10 (Particulate Matter) are the ones that fly the farthest and that do the most damage to humans, particularly to the young and the old. This is an enormously important book for all of us in this area. The list of the co-sponsors of Dr Devra Davis’s lecture on March 16 at UTEP is the most impressive this reviewer has seen in the last 30 years: 13 departments and 13 student groups. This indicates clearly how important Dr Davis’ work is for this community. |
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