cover image The Toxic Cloud

The Toxic Cloud

Michael H. Brown. HarperCollins Publishers, $18.95 (307pp) ISBN 978-0-06-015801-9

""Something in the wind'' has a literal rather than a literary connotation for journalist Brown. That ``something'' is composed of unseen toxic particlescarcinogens, compounds akin to nerve gas, unknown combinations of hazardous chemicals, the infamous MIC of the Bhopal disasterwafted on the wind far from their points of origin. Of approximately 204 dangerous compounds, the EPA regulates seven, according to the author. In Laying Waste, he looked at the Love Canal and other areas of ground pollution. Here he examines contaminated air and its travels throughout the country. Not a place in the U.S. is free of toxic clouds: pesticide residues from the cotton fields of Texas and Mississippi have turned up on Isle Royale in Lake Superior; along the Gulf coast, petrochemicals produce a breathtaking miasma, and the chances of contracting cancer there are one in three. Brown charges that EPA policy favors polluters and that neither government nor industry is willing to take responsibility for clean air. Perhaps this crusading book will help spur themand usto action. (October 14)