Devra Davis combines her deep personal connection to issues of health and the environment with her formidable scientific expertise, arguing for fundamentally new ways of thinking about health and the environment. Before she became one of the world’s leading epidemiologists, Davis was the victim of environmental pollution. As a young girl in Donora, Pennsylvania, she saw 20 of her hometown community members die and scores permanently injured in the smog disaster of October 26th, 1948.

In her landmark book, When Smoke Ran Like Water, Devra Davis documents how environmental toxins contribute to a broad spectrum of diseases. The book’s title alludes to an event 50 years ago in London. Davis writes that “cool air from across the English Channel settled over the Thames River Valley and did not move. London’s eight million residents huddled indoors and warmed themselves by their coal stoves. Smoke ran like tap water from a million chimneys.” The inversion layer that had formed over the English capital trapped the coal smoke at ground level. The result was smog so thick that people could not find their own homes, automobile traffic ground to a halt, and people died in droves. The smog is now estimated to have killed some 12,000 people.