Air Pollution: An Unclear and Present Danger

Journalist and author Beth Gardiner talks about her new book Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. And CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna talks about gene editing.

Steve Mirsky

This podcast was produced for The Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine's board of editors.

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Welcome to Scientific American’s Science Talk, posted on November 21st, 2019. I’m Steve Mirsky.

Here’s the beginning of a New York Times story from October 24th: “New data reveals that damaging air pollution has increased nationally since 2016, reversing a decades-long trend toward cleaner air.”

And here’s a line from a BBC story dated November 4^th: “An Indian health ministry official said the city's pollution monitors did not have enough digits to accurately record pollution levels, which he called a ‘disaster.’”

[GARDINER CLIP]

That’s journalist and author Beth Gardiner. And her new book is Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. I recently called her at her home in London. After my 30-minute conversation with Gardiner, stay tuned for a five-minute segment, sponsored by the Kavli Prize, with CRISPR gene-editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna. And now Beth Gardiner.

[GARDINER SEGMENT]

[DOUDNA SEGMENT]

That’s it for this episode. Get your science news at our Web site: www.ScientificAmerican.com, where you can find at least 30 stories in our archives about CRISPR and gene editing.

And follow us on Twitter, where you’ll get a tweet whenever a new item hits the Web site. Our twitter name is @sciam. For Scientific American’s Science Talk, I’m Steve Mirsky. Thanks for clicking on us.

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