Boston University's School of Public Health/Department of Environmental Health maintains a thriving Web photography gallery featuring six different exhibits of documentary work on public health issues. Below are excerpts from the monograph and traveling exhibition Breath Taken: The Landscape & Biography of Asbestos, an exhibition by Bill Ravanesi that portrays both social and scientific aspects of the disease.

Joe Darabant, Johns-Manville Plant in H Building from Breath Taken: The Landscape & Biography of Asbestos © Bill Ravanesi 1990 & © Center for Visual Arts in the Public Interest, Inc.

1949: The workers chipped in to present Joe with two wedding gifts - a clock, so he can get to work on time, and a rolling pin so his wife, Helen, can prod him on a bit. Joe's clothing is covered with chrysotile asbestos fibers. Joe Darabant was forced to retire in 1974 at age 50 due to his poor health. He died from asbestosis on April 26, 1990 at the age of 66. This photograph was made in 1989 in Joe's bedroom in Manville, New Jersey.

Two Asbestotic Specimens From Males In Their Early 60s from Breath Taken: The Landscape & Biography of Asbestos © Bill Ravanesi 1990 & © Center for Visual Arts in the Public Interest, Inc.

"Many of the effects frequently seen following the inhalation of asbestos fibers are present here. There is widespread scarring within both lungs (we don't see many fine small air spaces, these having been obliterated by the scar tissue. . . . It is known that the fine fibers that are inhaled not only stay in the lung but travel to the pleura, where they can be found decades later." - Irving J. Selikoff, M.D.

Other exhibits in the environmental health gallery include:

• Memories Come to Us in the Rain and the Wind: Oral Histories & Photographs of Navajo Uranium Miners & Their Families organized by Doug Brugge. This latest addition is based on a newly published book by the same name.
• Stolen Dreams: Portraits of Working Children by David Parker, M.D., also based on a book by the same name.
• Toxic Tour of Texas by Sharon Stewart
• Pesticide Poisoning of America by David Wells
• Coal Mining Series, a portfolio of over 25 years of work by photojournalist Earl Dotter

Previously Featured Art

Doomsday by Ulla Godwin

Excerpt from Metropolis, by Fritz Lang

(Issue 21 · posted December 5, 1997)

Open Heart Surgery Movie from The Franklin Institute Science Museum

Donor Lymph Nodes by Max Aguilera-Hellweg

(Issue 20 · posted November 14, 1997)

Banana Exploding by Andrew Davidhazy, and

Nature Reborn by Ming Fay

(Issue 18 · posted October 17, 1997)

Lincoln by Bela Julesz and Leon Harmon, and

Keith/four times by Chuck Close

(Issue 17 · posted October 2, 1997)

Human, full body scan by Meditherm, and

Recollections by Ed Tannenbaum

(Issue 16 · posted September 19, 1997)

Praying Mantis by Kenneth J. Stein, and

StareCase by Alan Dorin

(Issue 15 · posted September 5, 1997)

Pure GFP by Yang Hong,

Victor Ambros Lab, Dartmouth and

Light Forest by Betsy Connors

(Issue 14 · posted August 15, 1997)

more

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