When smoke ran like water

Tales of environmental deception and the battle against pollution

Devra Davis, Perseus Press, 286 pages, £14.99

Devra Davis grew up in Donora, a heavily polluted US steel town which suffered an environmental catastrophe in 1948. Soon, no one spoke of what had happened, and Davis only discovered her home town's dirty secret when she was at college elsewhere.

Davis is now a world-famous epidemiologist, but this accessible book is aimed at the general reader.

Its central point is that, too often, science asks why particular individuals succumb to diseases without looking at the broader issue of why such diseases are so common. Vast sums of money are poured into research to identify "genes for breast cancer" while ignoring the question of why breast cancer rates have spiralled in recent times. Davis, who studies environmental causes of breast cancer, is one of the few asking.

The book shows the strategies that big business uses to avoid dealing with environmental problems, and celebrates some of the brave people - often women - who have stood up to them.