Health, Climate Change and a Whole Host of Issues

I have just recently returned to my hometown of Toronto, Canada and last night, I attended a lecture by Devra Davis. If you haven't read her book When Smoke Ran Like Water, I highly recommend it. Devra worked as an adviser to Bill Clinton when he was president and she has campaigned against cancer. Her book When Smoke Ran Like Water discusses various cover ups with regards to pollution in the U.S. First she talks about her childhood experience in Donora, Pennsylvania which had many steel plants. She mentioned last night that in Donora in 1948, 20 people dropped dead just because of air pollution. When she was a child, drapes inevitably became black just because of the emissions from the steel plants. Her book also discusses something that many people probably do not know about. Up until the 1950s, Los Angeles had one of the best public transportation systems in the world, which mainly consisted of streetcar (tram) lines. In 1947, according to the book, "nearly two out of every five workers used public transportation. Two decades later, fewer than one out of ten did. Today the number is fewer than one in twenty nationwide." Why did this happen? In 1953, General Motors bought Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric, which built the streetcar lines and cars and replaced everything with buses and roads. Small wonder everyone wanted to own a car.

For those interested in more information on Devra, she holds a PhD in science studies from the University of Chicago and she is now the head of the world's first Centre for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh. You can check out her website at www.devradavis.com In my view, Devra is an excellent writer and public speaker because she relates her own experiences to what she writes, as in the case of living in Donora, Pennsylvania. At the lecture last night, she discussed many issues such as asbestos, which has just recently been banned by South Africa. It surprised me to find out that Canada has not yet banned it despite the fact that it is a very dangerous substance. Last night, Devra read a letter by a worker in India, where Canada exports much of its asbestos. According to the letter, the worker's union is thinking about banning asbestos, a step which Canada should follow. According to the CBC, 70% of the rise in workplace deaths is caused by asbestos. If you're interested in this issue and want to take action, go to http://www.bacanada.org/main.html