| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

John Wirth. Smelter Smoke in North America: The Politics of Transborder Pollution. (Development of Western Resources.) Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2000. Pp. xx, 264. $35.00.

This is a superb book that succeeds at many levels: as a history of lead smelting in British Columbia during the 1920s and 1930s and copper smelting in Arizona during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; as a history of the legal arguments used to protect industrial polluters before the 1970s; as a history of negotiations among the United States, Canada, and Mexico to reduce damage from sulphur oxide emissions; and as a history of the impact of the environmental movement of the 1970s and after on pollution abatement in North America. 1

The book has two parts. The first deals with the legal controversy created by the world's largest lead and zinc smelter at Trail, British Columbia, whose smoke damaged crops and reduced the value of farms south of the international border in Stevens County, Washington. That controversy peaked during the years from 1927 to 1941. A Canadian-American commission established the important principle that "the polluter should pay," but it ignored issues of public health, such as respiratory diseases in humans, and damage to the environment, including Columbia River fish. Science faced many difficult problems, not the least of which was determining whether plants could be damaged by sulphur oxides that left no visible mark, whether that invisible damage was cumulative, and whether it reduced crop yields. Nor could scientists easily distinguish between damage caused by natural conditions, such as drought and insect infestations, and those caused by smelter smoke. . . .

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