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.