The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change

Pediatrician Hendrickson debuts with an affecting report on climate change’s dire effects on young people. Hendrickson—who practices in Reno, Nev., the “fastest-warming city in the United States”—recounts such heartbreaking stories as watching a mother struggle to comfort her four-year-old son, who was hospitalized after wildfire smoke gave him respiratory problems, as he squirmed with discomfort caused by the nasal cannula feeding him oxygen. Profiles of young people across the country underscore the climate crisis’s devastating scope. For instance, Hendrickson shares the stories of a boy from Houston, Tex., who was traumatized after barely escaping severe flooding from Hurricane Harvey when he was five, and a sixth grader from Phoenix, Ariz., who died of heatstroke after going on a hike on a 112-degree day in 2016. Such accounts are harrowing, and Hendrickson describes in disturbing detail how the body is affected by air pollution and extreme heat (the latter, she explains, leads to reductions in blood volume as the body dehydrates, reducing the regularity of heart rhythm due to low blood flow and causing the breakdown of muscle, which releases toxic proteins). This visceral study is not easily forgotten. Agent: AmandaUrban, CAA. (July)