Dirty Planet: The Friends of the Earth Guide to Pollution and What You Can Do About it

Air pollution triggers 1 in 50 heart attacks in London. Animal fat is a major source of dioxins. Drinking tap water is better for the environment than drinking bottled. In Denmark the sale of drink in cans is illegal. This excellent and straightforwardly written paperback is exactly what its subtitle proclaims it to be. In a tour de force of practical research and frill-free reportage, Clayton pulls together a spectacular collection of pollution facts and shows us how we can help to reverse the globe-choking spiral that they represent. We can change things reactively, by being selective consumers, and pro-actively by opposing polluting practices and promoting cleaner greener ones, and this book is a practical handbook to doing this most effectively. For such a text to be convincing, it has to be presumed that the situation is not completely irredeemable and that our planet can save itself if we only let it (c.f. David Walker's A Leaf in Time, BfK 120). Clayton knows and demonstrates this, so the tone of the whole is upbeat, optimistic and above all practical. The blurb says 'Dirty Planet is the book you need to make the Earth a better place' - I'll raise a glass of tap water to that!