Toxic Airs

Toxic Airs is not merely a catalog of aerial concerns, but a full examination of how humans, in different times and places, have tried to address perceived problems with the air they breathe.

The authors have produced a marvellously wide-ranging book that opens up a series of questions for scholars of medico-environmental history. Not the least of these is what the relationship between the history of medicine and environmental history should be.

Lying at the nexus of two complementary historiographical traditions—the chemical and the environmental—this fascinating book provides a wholly original take on the multiple ways in which society has articulated conceptualizations and understandings of the air and atmosphere. Drawing on a wide range of disciplinary arenas, contributors address the social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of weather and climate in historical perspective, making important contributions to scholarship across a range of themes, including the history of science, science technology and society, the history of climate change debates, and the history of chemistry.

'All that is solid melts into air,' wrote Marx and Engels, evoking a sense of air as a medium where things disappear, evaporate, and lose their impact. In Toxic Airs, the contributors convincingly argue otherwise, that air is substantial. This rich and diverse interdisciplinary exploration of the history, culture, and science of air and atmosphere makes visible the complex relationship of humans and environment.