WITH EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

This is the second book to attack the unappetizing facts about air pollution this season, and it does so in a more scientific, less popular manner than Carr's The Breath of Life (p. 149). The presentation of the material is inevitably much the same as it trundles from descriptions of the various pollutants (natural, industrial, automotive) through the damage they cause to material and human substances (cancer, lung disease, etc.) to the list of possible solutions. Although the author's suggestions are aimed at ""immediate and sharp curtailment"" of pollution, they are -- like most technological reforms -- difficult to achieve in the face of business and political interests. The government aid, incentive and control, the private action groups, the increased research that would supposedly get the necessary equipment into use, do not promise to provide that ""immediacy and sharpness"" that the author deems so obviously necessary. Nonetheless, the book is informative and sound -- and if it only adds one more ""Hear, Hear!"" to the belated hullabaloo, it is still worth its printed while.