"Air pollution prematurely kills seven million people every year, including more than one hundred thousand Americans. It is strongly linked to strokes, heart attacks, many kinds of cancer, dementia, and premature birth, among other ailments. In Choked, Beth Gardiner travels the world to tell the story of this modern-day plague, taking readers from the halls of power in Washington and the diesel-fogged London streets she walks with her daughter to Poland's coal heartland and India's gasping capital. In a gripping narrative that's alive with powerful voices and personalities, she exposes the political decisions and economic forces that have kept so many of us breathing dirty air. This is a moving, up-close look at the human toll, where we meet the scientists who have transformed our understanding of pollution's effects on the body and the ordinary people fighting for a cleaner future."--Page 2 of cover.

Prologue. Inhale: the meaning of a breath -- Holding our breath ; The measure of a lung: charting pollution's power ; Ground zero: Delhi's health emergency ; 9,416: living London's diesel disaster ; Air you can chew : Poland and the price of coal ; Cows, almonds, asthma: crisis in the San Joaquin Valley ; Home fires burning: a paradigm shifts -- coming up for air. To change a nation: the story of America's Clean Air Act ; Reluctant innovators: air and the automakers ; Inch by inch: L.A.'s long road ; Live from the "airpocalypse": China's next revolution ; "To whom belongs the city?": Berlin looks beyond cars -- Epilogue. Exhale: what comes next.