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The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution - and How We Can Fight Back
More than 90% of the world's population is exposed to air pollutant concentrations exceeding World Health Organisation guideline levels. Having air that is healthy to breathe is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century. Some of this is unfinished business from the last 60 years, but as more and more of us live in cities, more of us are living close to pollution sources. Europe is wrestling with air pollution from diesel transport and in China and India they are facing air pollution problems that they have never met before. The air pollution that we breathe every day is largely invisible to us but it is having a significant impact on our health and that of our children. The Invisible Killer will take you on a journey from London to Los Angeles to Beijing, challenging our ideas of what creates air pollution and how we measure it, and introducing us to incredible individuals whose groundbreaking research paved the way to today's understanding, often at their own detriment. Dr Fuller argues that to change the future of our planet and collective global health, city and national government action is essential. It is not for lack of evidence that air pollution harm persists. Instead it remains in place due to a lack of political will to make changes to our urban lives, to persuade the public and to make polluters bear the full cost of the harm that they do.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 18, 2018
22 people are currently reading
256 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 8, 2019
After a small adjustment period of settling into learning a bit about the science of air pollution, this book was extremely useful and has made me a) think about pollution related activities to begin with and b) has made me more conscious of my lifestyle.
This book takes us on a little tour of global pollution through the decades and the shocking number of early warnings and missed opportunities we've had to clean up the air!
Notable points:
1) Pollution associated morbidity/mortality is not just confined to localised, short-term, high intensity pollution events- it is of cumulative, widespread and long-term detriment to our health. See the 'The Six Cities study, Dockery (1993) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056.... In fact, air pollution can inhibit lung growth in infants by up to 5% - clearly a life long impact.
2) Pollution is not at it's greatest immediately following release into the air but rather gases and particles react over time in the presence of sunlight to increase the burden of pollution in the air. Designing policy around reduction of isolated pollutants isn't going to work and it might actually make things worse.
3) Climate change and pollution reduction need to be concomitantly addressed. For example, wood-burning is being ENCOURAGED and labelled 'carbon neutral' as long as that tree is replaced however, from a pollution standpoint, wood-burning is a huge problem that causes premature death, especially wood with higher water composition or wood containing coatings (people may burn construction grade timber coated in arsenic for example, how lovely.) Clearly, an increase in wood burning will exacerbate pollution issues. Also, wood-burning is arguably not carbon neutral anyway because burning e.g. 1 tree = 1 trees worth CO2 released quickly, it may take a century to mitigate that release in the form of another tree. Add in the fossil fuels burned in the felling and transportation of wood and ABRACADABRA it's not really a simple carbon neutral party so you'd have to plants LOADS of trees per tree down. Also pollutants like ozone, nitrogen dioxide etc. may also be big global warming culprits anyway.
3) We may be committing to getting rid of petrol and diesel cars in the next decade but there isn't a diesel alternative to HGV's so it's likely that diesel will still be used for ages. And freight is a huge pollutant in the UK. Vans are duplicating trips almost empty from competing companies to make deliveries in cities and they aren't subject to restrictions like cars. Nationalising delivery services or having a market monopoly on them would reduce congestion a lot (lol not gonna happen)
4) Electric vehicles are obvs better but they're also heavier and road-wear from braking etc. throws up loads of pollutants so they wouldn't reduce pollution to zero. And new cars passing higher exhaust restriction in laboratory conditions go on to perform much poorer on actual roads.
5) Adding roads paradoxically just means people all head over to the new road to cut the traffic a.k.a The Braess Paradox. Getting RID of roads is the way forward as it decreases cars and thus pollution.
Got loads of other things but like at this point just read the book tbh.
In SUM: I'm glad I don't live in China anymore and think I'm going to get a bike when I go back to uni with a basket on the front.
This book takes us on a little tour of global pollution through the decades and the shocking number of early warnings and missed opportunities we've had to clean up the air!
Notable points:
1) Pollution associated morbidity/mortality is not just confined to localised, short-term, high intensity pollution events- it is of cumulative, widespread and long-term detriment to our health. See the 'The Six Cities study, Dockery (1993) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056.... In fact, air pollution can inhibit lung growth in infants by up to 5% - clearly a life long impact.
2) Pollution is not at it's greatest immediately following release into the air but rather gases and particles react over time in the presence of sunlight to increase the burden of pollution in the air. Designing policy around reduction of isolated pollutants isn't going to work and it might actually make things worse.
3) Climate change and pollution reduction need to be concomitantly addressed. For example, wood-burning is being ENCOURAGED and labelled 'carbon neutral' as long as that tree is replaced however, from a pollution standpoint, wood-burning is a huge problem that causes premature death, especially wood with higher water composition or wood containing coatings (people may burn construction grade timber coated in arsenic for example, how lovely.) Clearly, an increase in wood burning will exacerbate pollution issues. Also, wood-burning is arguably not carbon neutral anyway because burning e.g. 1 tree = 1 trees worth CO2 released quickly, it may take a century to mitigate that release in the form of another tree. Add in the fossil fuels burned in the felling and transportation of wood and ABRACADABRA it's not really a simple carbon neutral party so you'd have to plants LOADS of trees per tree down. Also pollutants like ozone, nitrogen dioxide etc. may also be big global warming culprits anyway.
3) We may be committing to getting rid of petrol and diesel cars in the next decade but there isn't a diesel alternative to HGV's so it's likely that diesel will still be used for ages. And freight is a huge pollutant in the UK. Vans are duplicating trips almost empty from competing companies to make deliveries in cities and they aren't subject to restrictions like cars. Nationalising delivery services or having a market monopoly on them would reduce congestion a lot (lol not gonna happen)
4) Electric vehicles are obvs better but they're also heavier and road-wear from braking etc. throws up loads of pollutants so they wouldn't reduce pollution to zero. And new cars passing higher exhaust restriction in laboratory conditions go on to perform much poorer on actual roads.
5) Adding roads paradoxically just means people all head over to the new road to cut the traffic a.k.a The Braess Paradox. Getting RID of roads is the way forward as it decreases cars and thus pollution.
Got loads of other things but like at this point just read the book tbh.
In SUM: I'm glad I don't live in China anymore and think I'm going to get a bike when I go back to uni with a basket on the front.
March 1, 2021
Who's this for:
That's a tough one. In the end, I think everyone would need to read it as it's something concerning everyone and the more people are aware the better as the main issue is not that in general we don't know what causes air pollution or that there are no technologies to massively reduce it. It's in the end a very political problem and that changes only if the masses understand the issues and are willing to make the right political choices and accepting potential minor inconveniences.
I liked:
- Definitely that the book was written and made more or less approachable for everyone.
- The general form of it. Hard research combined with anecdotes and real world examples (I didn't appreciate too much the execution of it though, see below).
- The author understands that the main issue is lack of popular know-how about the issues around air pollution and this seems to have been the motivation for the book. In that perfect strategy to write a popular science book!
I didn't like:
- While I really liked the general form of it the book felt very out of order. There were chapters but the there was no real thread to follow. Somehow jumping from one topic to the other. And back and forth and back. Most of the things that were written were good and relevant but it seems they have been grouped wrongly and this lead to some confusion and repetition.
- The book seems to cover many very important topics but it didn't really go into too much explaining and really revealing how the weather, air or pollution really work. It stopped at stating some facts and counterintuitive things for example but it didn't get so far to explain these things. Why is there more pollution of certain kind in the winter? How does wind behave in valley vs. open cities? Why is the ozone layer gap over Australia? I know you can find all this out over the internet but I read a book so I don't have to gather and structure the information myself. Unfortunately in this regard the book really missed it's purpose (as a book).
Things I learned:
There are a couple of pieces that I took specifically out of the book but reflecting about some points there are bigger lessons to learn (see further below).
- The problem of air pollution is still bigger than I thought (living in Switzerland is in that regard not helpful). Many cities still have issues some other cities have faced in the past but also new types of pollution.
- It's really a global problem. Apparently you can measure leaking gas from fracking operations in the US in the Swiss alps.
- Obviously the air mixes extremely with the winds and the above observation makes this clear but new was for me that the air from the northern and southern hemisphere mix rarely and therefore there are actually 2 "zones". So air pollution issues are "only half global". Effects of course (global warming, ozone, rising sea levels, etc. are again then global)
- Current global main issues are 1) Transportation in cities (cars mostly) and 2) Home heating with open fires. In particular the second one was surprising. Your cozy fire in your "first world city"? It's actually causing non-trivial pollution.
- Adding lanes doesn't solve congestion problems but only makes it worse. The oppositive though is also true: You can remove lanes to reduce congestion (assuming reasonable alternatives). Game theory hard at work here.
- There are awesome examples of how cool reduction of city traffic can look like. Just Google "Cheonggyecheon before after"
More general learnings/thoughts:
- The importance of regulation. Open & liberal markets don't work sustainably. The air is probably one of the best examples of the tragedy of the commons. If you don't tax the waste companies are allowed to release into the air, they have no interest not to do it as long as it's commercially cheaper. Markets need (for many reasons) to be free but they need to be regulated on all the things that have an impact on things they are not accounted for but other pay for (air, water, human attention, etc.).
- Don't trust "self control". Companies will find legal or illegal way around self-imposed regulations. Yes, it's mostly the same point as above but trusting in "self control" is big fallacy. Current example the issue around social media (see the documentary "The Social Dilemma").
- Stuff is complex. Things that seem fairly obvious now were not that clear in the past. "Oh, that black stuff that is coming out of the chimney? Don't worry, it's not harmful.". Crazy now but that definitely was the sentiment not that long ago. Make no mistake, this wasn't because people were stupid and now we are smart.
- We are not smarter, we just know more. Knowledge builds up with things you can safely assume to be true to be able to understand more that based on logic just make sense. The earth is round so we can understand a lot of observations that are just very hard to understand if the earth would be flat and we don't have individually go and measure it ourselves. Breathing black stuff from a chimney is bad for you even if you wouldn't realize that for 40 years yourself.
- We are still and should stay pretty naive. We have to be careful with the things we assume we know and be open to learn new things. Newton was right mostly until we learned that it's basically true but only for the vast majority of what we at that time could observe. Until Einstein discovered what happens on the edge of those assumptions. The book "Sapiens" makes a point that humans made huge leaps and bounds in innovation when we started accepting that naivety because this acceptance allowed us ask questions nobody has answers to and start answering them. And this lead to innovation and progress. We still miss a lof of things. About air pollution and much more.
That's a tough one. In the end, I think everyone would need to read it as it's something concerning everyone and the more people are aware the better as the main issue is not that in general we don't know what causes air pollution or that there are no technologies to massively reduce it. It's in the end a very political problem and that changes only if the masses understand the issues and are willing to make the right political choices and accepting potential minor inconveniences.
I liked:
- Definitely that the book was written and made more or less approachable for everyone.
- The general form of it. Hard research combined with anecdotes and real world examples (I didn't appreciate too much the execution of it though, see below).
- The author understands that the main issue is lack of popular know-how about the issues around air pollution and this seems to have been the motivation for the book. In that perfect strategy to write a popular science book!
I didn't like:
- While I really liked the general form of it the book felt very out of order. There were chapters but the there was no real thread to follow. Somehow jumping from one topic to the other. And back and forth and back. Most of the things that were written were good and relevant but it seems they have been grouped wrongly and this lead to some confusion and repetition.
- The book seems to cover many very important topics but it didn't really go into too much explaining and really revealing how the weather, air or pollution really work. It stopped at stating some facts and counterintuitive things for example but it didn't get so far to explain these things. Why is there more pollution of certain kind in the winter? How does wind behave in valley vs. open cities? Why is the ozone layer gap over Australia? I know you can find all this out over the internet but I read a book so I don't have to gather and structure the information myself. Unfortunately in this regard the book really missed it's purpose (as a book).
Things I learned:
There are a couple of pieces that I took specifically out of the book but reflecting about some points there are bigger lessons to learn (see further below).
- The problem of air pollution is still bigger than I thought (living in Switzerland is in that regard not helpful). Many cities still have issues some other cities have faced in the past but also new types of pollution.
- It's really a global problem. Apparently you can measure leaking gas from fracking operations in the US in the Swiss alps.
- Obviously the air mixes extremely with the winds and the above observation makes this clear but new was for me that the air from the northern and southern hemisphere mix rarely and therefore there are actually 2 "zones". So air pollution issues are "only half global". Effects of course (global warming, ozone, rising sea levels, etc. are again then global)
- Current global main issues are 1) Transportation in cities (cars mostly) and 2) Home heating with open fires. In particular the second one was surprising. Your cozy fire in your "first world city"? It's actually causing non-trivial pollution.
- Adding lanes doesn't solve congestion problems but only makes it worse. The oppositive though is also true: You can remove lanes to reduce congestion (assuming reasonable alternatives). Game theory hard at work here.
- There are awesome examples of how cool reduction of city traffic can look like. Just Google "Cheonggyecheon before after"
More general learnings/thoughts:
- The importance of regulation. Open & liberal markets don't work sustainably. The air is probably one of the best examples of the tragedy of the commons. If you don't tax the waste companies are allowed to release into the air, they have no interest not to do it as long as it's commercially cheaper. Markets need (for many reasons) to be free but they need to be regulated on all the things that have an impact on things they are not accounted for but other pay for (air, water, human attention, etc.).
- Don't trust "self control". Companies will find legal or illegal way around self-imposed regulations. Yes, it's mostly the same point as above but trusting in "self control" is big fallacy. Current example the issue around social media (see the documentary "The Social Dilemma").
- Stuff is complex. Things that seem fairly obvious now were not that clear in the past. "Oh, that black stuff that is coming out of the chimney? Don't worry, it's not harmful.". Crazy now but that definitely was the sentiment not that long ago. Make no mistake, this wasn't because people were stupid and now we are smart.
- We are not smarter, we just know more. Knowledge builds up with things you can safely assume to be true to be able to understand more that based on logic just make sense. The earth is round so we can understand a lot of observations that are just very hard to understand if the earth would be flat and we don't have individually go and measure it ourselves. Breathing black stuff from a chimney is bad for you even if you wouldn't realize that for 40 years yourself.
- We are still and should stay pretty naive. We have to be careful with the things we assume we know and be open to learn new things. Newton was right mostly until we learned that it's basically true but only for the vast majority of what we at that time could observe. Until Einstein discovered what happens on the edge of those assumptions. The book "Sapiens" makes a point that humans made huge leaps and bounds in innovation when we started accepting that naivety because this acceptance allowed us ask questions nobody has answers to and start answering them. And this lead to innovation and progress. We still miss a lof of things. About air pollution and much more.
March 25, 2025
CW: death/disease from air pollution
If you are like me and have been looking everywhere for a book on pollution written for a general audience--this book is a great option.
Dr. Gary Fuller is an air pollution scientist at King's college in London and I thought he did a fantastic job weaving together the history, science, and politics of air pollution.
The book begins with some history of when we as humans started paying attention to air quality. In part II, Fuller goes through several important pollutants such as particulate matter, ozone, lead in gasoline, and acid rain (NOx and SOx).
In part 3, he talks about many of the modern challenges including transportation, diesel fuel, indoor air pollution, etc.
My only minor complaint is that I wish he went into more detail on the chemistry and also the methods that are used to detect each of these pollutants. But, I am a chemist so of course that is my wish haha!
This book is perfect for a general audience if they want to gain a basic understanding of the history and science of air pollution.
(4.5 stars)
If you are like me and have been looking everywhere for a book on pollution written for a general audience--this book is a great option.
Dr. Gary Fuller is an air pollution scientist at King's college in London and I thought he did a fantastic job weaving together the history, science, and politics of air pollution.
The book begins with some history of when we as humans started paying attention to air quality. In part II, Fuller goes through several important pollutants such as particulate matter, ozone, lead in gasoline, and acid rain (NOx and SOx).
In part 3, he talks about many of the modern challenges including transportation, diesel fuel, indoor air pollution, etc.
My only minor complaint is that I wish he went into more detail on the chemistry and also the methods that are used to detect each of these pollutants. But, I am a chemist so of course that is my wish haha!
This book is perfect for a general audience if they want to gain a basic understanding of the history and science of air pollution.
(4.5 stars)
January 7, 2021
The Invisible Killer is an eye-opening book. Fuller does a great job of creating a narrative out of the history and development of air pollution science.
I particularly enjoyed the "battle grounds of today" part of the book. Fuller manages to combine the local with the global, and I feel I now have a grasp of the main pollution problems in each region of the world, including my native Scandinavia. That is a testament to Fuller's storytelling skills.
My main takeaways from the book are two-fold:
First, our air is in a very bad state, even in developed countries not plagued by visible smog. The smallest air pollution particles are not visible, but cause life-long impediments in children and are a leading cause of early death. Air pollution is projected to cause 200,000 early deaths in the EU alone in 2020.
Second, looking into the future, there are good news and bad news. The good news is that air pollution is relatively speaking not such a difficult or expensive problem to solve, and Fuller shows several attainable initiatives that could make a big difference – such as banning home wood-burning. The bad news is that the current political will or regulatory trajectory is nowhere near ambitious enough to clear our air – in fact, in western European cities, it is not unlikely we'll get worse air quality in the coming decades.
I particularly enjoyed the "battle grounds of today" part of the book. Fuller manages to combine the local with the global, and I feel I now have a grasp of the main pollution problems in each region of the world, including my native Scandinavia. That is a testament to Fuller's storytelling skills.
My main takeaways from the book are two-fold:
First, our air is in a very bad state, even in developed countries not plagued by visible smog. The smallest air pollution particles are not visible, but cause life-long impediments in children and are a leading cause of early death. Air pollution is projected to cause 200,000 early deaths in the EU alone in 2020.
Second, looking into the future, there are good news and bad news. The good news is that air pollution is relatively speaking not such a difficult or expensive problem to solve, and Fuller shows several attainable initiatives that could make a big difference – such as banning home wood-burning. The bad news is that the current political will or regulatory trajectory is nowhere near ambitious enough to clear our air – in fact, in western European cities, it is not unlikely we'll get worse air quality in the coming decades.
November 22, 2019
Air pollution is one of the most pressing and least understood challenges of our time. I really wanted this to be a 5 star book to raise awareness of the important issue. Sadly, while this book contains a lot of important and fascinating information, it is poorly organized, presented and written. Fuller tries to engage the reader by creating a narrative and weaving in what he thinks are interesting and compelling stories but ends up with a hodge podge of points scattered throughout the book.
Still a must read for anyone interested in this issue.
Still a must read for anyone interested in this issue.
November 23, 2019
Air quality is an urgent, global issue which Fuller tackles from a historic, scientific , political, social and economic perspective, all in a readable and enlighting manner. The book discusses solutions both policy and technical which have had varying degrees of success and shines a light on the dangers of corporate intreast. If you breath air you should read this book. If you work in policy or any industry which intersects with air quality you should read this twice!
May 20, 2020
Well structured. Built around an historical story approach with chapter a digestible module. The links to and from chapters are made well, back and forward. The science is explained in layman's terms, and this is a great primer for the interested reader, or the starting point for more reading so nice the text is well supported with links to more reading and citations.
September 7, 2023
Interesting read. I learned some new things though it was longer than it needed to be. The last two chapters were essentially a summary of the entire book. If you don't want to read this entire book, just read the last 25 pages.
November 4, 2020
Very informative and easy to follow for anyone wanting to understand the impacts of air pollution in greater detail - I personally think everyone should read this!
December 30, 2019
This book takes the reader on a journey that describes the science related to Air pollution. The book also highlights the disturbing facts that all too often industry and governments are not motivated sufficiently towards protecting the populations general health, when there is money to be made from not doing so. Jobs that create money and increased death rates.
E.g. It was known since the Roman times that lead caused people to go " crazy". Yet lead was added to petrol by the industry and goverments ( people) that permitted it. How many died and or sufferred over the following years due to this immoral action?. And of course the same industries with their political "gentlemen's agreements" of "self regulation" are continuing their pollution as usual behavoiurs. E.g. Diesal emmisions. Putting there own profits before others well being. Working isn't a moral activity if your work harms people.
E.g. It was known since the Roman times that lead caused people to go " crazy". Yet lead was added to petrol by the industry and goverments ( people) that permitted it. How many died and or sufferred over the following years due to this immoral action?. And of course the same industries with their political "gentlemen's agreements" of "self regulation" are continuing their pollution as usual behavoiurs. E.g. Diesal emmisions. Putting there own profits before others well being. Working isn't a moral activity if your work harms people.
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