Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
When Devra was 2 years old, Donora made national headlines. In Octo-
ber of 1948, a smog of coal and coke fumes, mixed with toxic fluoride and
cadmium gases from the mills, became trapped in the valley by an atmo-
spheric inversion. It hung there for nearly a week, so dark and thick that
cars could not navigate the streets even with headlights on in daytime. A
third of the town's residents fell ill within a few days, and the death rate for
that month was 50 people more than average, 20 of those “extra” deaths
occurring in the first 4 days of smog.The event was never fully investigated,
although a few chemists and physicians believed that the fluoride and cad-
mium gases from the zinc mill were connected with those deaths.“The idea
that air pollution played any role in when and how many people die had
never been imagined,” Davis explains. Nonetheless, the incident in Donora,
along with similar lethal smog in Belgium in 1930 and England in 1952,
raised public and professional concern about air pollution. Donora's killer
smog ultimately contributed to passage of the federal Clean Air Act of
1956. It may also have contributed to the heart problems in Davis's family.
Fluoride gas leaves no traces on the lungs, but it directly weakens the heart.
That early experience with pollution did not inspire Davis to pursue a
career in public health. Rather, her passionate interests were in science, reli-
gion, and music. One of the fundamental precepts of Judaism is to study the
Torah, the five topics of the Old Testament. As a child, Davis loved to hear
the stories of the rabbis. Her devotion to Torah study carried over into
other areas of learning as well, and has remained central to her life. She also
spent hours each day playing the cello, eventually becoming the first-chair
cellist of the Pennsylvania High School State Orchestra. But it was science,
and questions about the realms of science and religion, that led her to pur-
sue higher education.
Although no one in Davis's working-class family had a college education
(her mother had dropped out to get married, but completed her degree
later in life, after raising four children), Davis was recruited by the Univer-
sity of Chicago when she was 15 years old. Her parents would not let her
go away to college at that age, but Davis, already tall and mature, felt more
comfortable on a college campus than with high school peers. Her family
had moved to Pittsburgh, and she began taking classes at the University
of Pittsburgh while still in high school. Her most exciting course was
graduate-level statistics. “The teacher was wonderful, “ she says. “I was like
a sponge!” (She still has strong feelings about statistics, always conscious of
