Smoke and Mirrors

Who gets to breathe clean air? Who benefits from the cheaper products produced with dirty air? The answers, as the contributors to Smoke and Mirrors tell us, are sometimes as gray as the air itself.
From the coal factory chimneys in Manchester in the late nineteenth century to the smog hanging over Los Angeles in the late twentieth century, air pollution has long been one of the greatest threats to our environment. In this important collection of original essays, the leading environmental scientists and social scientists examine the politics of air pollution policies and help us to understand the ways these policies have led to, idiosyncratic, effective, ineffective, and even disastrous choices about what we choose to put into and take out of the air. Offering historical, contemporary and cross-national perspectives, this volume provides a refreshing new approach to understanding how air pollution policies have evolved over time.

Vorwort
A history of the politics of air pollution.

Inhalt

IntroductionThe Emergence of Air Pollution as a ProblemPerceptions and E?ects of Late Victorian Air Pollution "The Invisible Evil”: Noxious Vapor and Public Health in Manchester during the Age of Industry Public Perceptions of Smoke Pollution in Victorian Manchester Uplands Downwind: Acidity and Ecological Change in the Southeast Lancashire Moorlands The "Smoky City” between the Wars The Merits of the Precautionary Principle: Controlling Automobile Exhausts in Germany and the United States before Interpreting the London Fog Disaster Localizing Smog: Transgressions in the Therapeutic Landscape Air Pollution Policy TodayA Fine Balance: Automobile Pollution Control Strategies in California Who Owns the Air? Clean Air Act Implementation as a Negotiation of Common Property Rights Air Pollution in Spain: A "Peripheral” Nation Transforms Clearing the Air and Breathing Freely: The Health Politics of Air Pollution and Asthma Invisible People, Invisible Places: Connecting Air Pollution and Pesticide Drift in California Notes from the Field: Air Pollution Engineering as Cultural Experience The Social and Political Construction of Air Pollution: Air Pollution Policies for Mexico CityAfterword Contributors Index