On January 1, 2016, the Baltimore Sun marked the end of the city’s “deadliest year.” In 2015, Baltimore counted 344 homicides-nearly 90 percent of them caused by gun violence. ${}^1$${}^1$^(1){ }^{1} The historically high number of deaths drew condemnation nationwide. Decrying that “too many continue to die on our streets,” the mayor fired the chief of police. Maryland’s governor called the murder rate “disgusting.” And then-presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed Barack Obama, asserting that "Our great African American president hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!"2
2016 年 1 月 1 日，《巴爾的摩太陽報》標誌著該市「最致命的一年」的結束。 2015年，巴爾的摩發生了344起兇殺案，其中近90％是由槍枝暴力引起的。 ${}^1$${}^1$^(1){ }^{1} 死亡人數創歷史新高，引發全國性的譴責。市長譴責“街頭仍有太多人死亡”，並解雇了警察局長。馬裡蘭州州長稱謀殺率「令人厭惡」。當時的總統候選人唐納德·川普將責任歸咎於巴拉克·歐巴馬，聲稱「我們偉大的非裔美國總統並沒有對那些如此高興和公開地摧毀巴爾的摩的暴徒產生積極影響！」2

City, state, and national leaders had less to say when, just two years earlier, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a report quantifying the health effects of prolonged air pollution. The report indicated that, in Baltimore, deaths attributable to long-term air pollution were four times the number caused by homicide. ${}^3$${}^3$^(3){ }^{3}
就在兩年前，麻省理工學院的研究人員發表了一份量化長期空氣污染對健康影響的報告，而當時市、州和國家領導人對此無話可說。報告指出，在巴爾的摩，因長期空氣污染而死亡的人數是因兇殺案而死亡的人數的四倍。 ${}^3$${}^3$^(3){ }^{3}

You would never know this looking at official records. There is not a single death certificate in Maryland that names “air pollution” as the cause of anyone’s mortality. Such papers name the “final” health “event” (heart disease, lung cancer, chronic lower respiratory illness), not its atmospheric causes. ${}^4$${}^4$^(4){ }^{4} Nor do regulators track pollution in a manner that invites an aggregate analysis. Researchers from MIT came to this figure through some arduous arithmetic, combining emissions from point sources tracked in isolation and pollutants regulated one by one.
從官方記錄中你永遠不會知道這一點。馬裡蘭州沒有一份死亡證明將「空氣污染」列為導致任何人死亡的原因。這些論文指出的是「最終的」健康「事件」（心臟病、肺癌、慢性下呼吸道疾病），而不是其大氣原因。 ${}^4$${}^4$^(4){ }^{4} 監管機構也不會以需要進行匯總分析的方式追蹤污染情況。麻省理工學院的研究人員透過艱苦的計算得出了這個數字，他們將孤立追蹤的點源排放量與逐一管制的污染物排放量結合起來。

Even still, there is much that their numbers fail to capture: such as the fact that, within Baltimore, there are twenty-year gaps in life expectancy between neighborhoods sited just miles apart. ${}^5$${}^5$^(5){ }^{5} In the neighborhood that I know best-a heavily industrialized peninsula on the city’s far south side called Curtis Bay - the “average” resident will die before they reach their seventies. ${}^6$${}^6$^(6){ }^{6} Their lives end sooner so as to enable futures elsewhere. But, again, you would never know this looking at official records. You might register the deaths, but not the fundamental reasons for them, nor the steely
即便如此，他們的數字仍未能反映出許多事實：例如，在巴爾的摩，相距僅幾英里的社區之間的預期壽命卻存在二十年的差距。 ${}^5$${}^5$^(5){ }^{5} 在我最熟悉的街區——位於城市最南端、工業化程度較高的半島柯蒂斯灣——這裡的「普通」居民在 70 歲之前就會死去。 ${}^6$${}^6$^(6){ }^{6} 他們的生命提早結束，是為了在別處擁有未來。但是，再說一次，你從官方記錄中永遠不會知道這一點。你可能會記錄死亡，但不會記錄死亡的根本原因，也不會記錄鋼鐵般的
logics that make them reasonable. Not the quiet, long-term forces that bind these foreclosed futures to the stable lives and secure worlds of privileged others.
使它們合理的邏輯。並不是那些將這些被剝奪的未來與其他享有特權的人的穩定生活和安全世界聯繫在一起的安靜的、長期的力量。

This book turns a sharp eye on those hazy forces, and what it takes for people living with them to build better worlds. It is set in a time still flush with industrial exposures, but firmly after the future smokestacks once appeared to promise. And it is set in Curtis Bay: a low-income, multiracial (but tensely integrated) community of about ten thousand people where I have been working since 2010, and which just years before ranked first in the United States for air pollutants released from stationary sources.* There have been many noxious projects sited here over the past two hundred years-from quarantine stations built to contain the exhalations of contagious people to weapons-making that provisioned two world wars - but today Curtis Bay is chiefly home to fossil fuel transport, waste management, and chemical production.
本書敏銳地審視了這些模糊的力量，以及與它們共存的人們需要做些什麼來建立更美好的世界。故事背景設定在一個工業化程度仍然很高的時代，但時代已經遠遠落後於曾經充滿希望的煙囪。故事發生在柯蒂斯灣：一個低收入、多種族（但緊密融合）的社區，約有一萬人，我自 2010 年以來一直在這裡工作，而就在幾年前，這裡的固定污染源空氣污染物排放量位居美國第一。 * 在過去的兩百年裡，這裡曾建起許多有害項目，從為控制傳染病人呼氣而建造的檢疫站到為兩次世界大戰提供武器的製造廠，但如今，柯蒂斯灣主要集中於化石燃料運輸、廢物管理和化學品生產。

These developments are not inert. Even children understand this. I first came to Curtis Bay as a teacher of six-year-olds who surprised me by skipping recess, because they found the thick haze made it hard to breathe, which made it hard to run. They lose parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, grandparents, and friends to respiratory illness at higher rates than almost anywhere in Maryland. ${}^7$${}^7$^(7){ }^{7} But if you ask locals why, you will find that few reply in terms of terminal events. Instead, many shrug before gesturing toward a surface in their vicinity-a car, a windowsill, a clothesline-and postulating that it must have something to do with “the dust.”
這些發展並不是靜止的。連小孩子也明白這一點。我第一次來到柯蒂斯灣時是一名六歲孩子的老師，令我驚訝的是，孩子們竟然跳過了課間休息，因為濃重的霧霾讓他們呼吸困難，進而難以奔跑。他們因呼吸系統疾病失去父母、阿姨、叔叔、鄰居、祖父母和朋友的比例比馬裡蘭州幾乎任何地方都高。 ${}^7$${}^7$^(7){ }^{7} 但如果你問當地人為什麼，你會發現很少人用終極事件來回答。相反，許多人只是聳聳肩，然後指著附近的物體表面——汽車、窗台、晾衣繩——並假設這一定與「灰塵」有關。
“Dust” is a perceptive name for the conditions of life and death in late industrial Baltimore. ${}^8$${}^8$^(8){ }^{8} In the 1950 and 1960 s, when union jobs in manufacturing provided stable livelihoods for one-third of Baltimore’s workforce, residents would point to the red debris that coated their belongings and assert it was "the color of money."9 Today, when local industry continues to pollute but automation means that it employs less than 3 percent of workers citywide, the dust is a sign that places like Curtis Bay are “neglected” and “forgotten.” ${}^{10}$${}^{10}$^(10){ }^{10} Most residents these days scrape by in a postindustrial economy composed of low-wage jobs in food service, logistics, and health
「塵埃」是對晚期工業化巴爾的摩的生活和死亡狀況的一個敏銳的名稱。 ${}^8$${}^8$^(8){ }^{8} 在 20 世紀 50 和 60 年代，製造業的工會工作為巴爾的摩三分之一的勞動力提供了穩定的生計，居民們會指著覆蓋在他們物品上的紅色碎片，宣稱那是「金錢的顏色」。 9 如今，當地工業繼續造成污染，但自動化意味著其僱用的工人不到全市 3%，灰塵表明柯蒂斯灣這樣的地方被「忽視」和「遺忘」。 ${}^{10}$${}^{10}$^(10){ }^{10} 如今，大多數居民在後工業經濟中勉強維持生計，這些經濟由食品服務、物流和醫療衛生等低薪工作組成

FIGURE 0.2. “The color of money.” A Baltimore woman wipes soot from the roof of her car in a photo dated July 8, 1967. Baltimore Sun archive.
圖 0.2。 「金錢的顏色。」這張照片拍攝於 1967 年 7 月 8 日，拍攝者是巴爾的摩的一名女子，她正在擦拭車頂上的煙灰。照片來源：《巴爾的摩太陽報》檔案。
care, and old-timers will tell you that the haze has thinned with the attrition of industrial lifeways. It has. But still, all manner of things hang in the air. Fumes from tanker trucks that fill up at the region’s oil terminals. Soot from coal piles that tower high above the local park. Emissions from a medical waste incinerator that burns biohazard bags from beyond both state and national borders. And clouds from chemical plants whose managers stave off inquiring minds with platitudes like, “Chloe, everything we make is dust.”
小心，老人家會告訴你，隨著工業生活方式的逐漸消退，霧霾已經變薄。是的。但一切事情仍然懸而未決。該地區石油碼頭加油的油罐車冒出的濃煙。當地公園上方高聳的煤堆所產生的煙灰。醫療廢棄物焚燒爐焚燒生物危害袋時產生的排放物來自州和國家邊界以外。還有來自化工廠的雲，這些工廠的管理人員用「克洛伊，我們製造的一切都是灰塵」這樣的陳腔濫調來打消人們的疑問。

It sounds gentle. And perhaps it feels that way next to the bang of a gunshot. While gun violence happens in a flash, the dust moves cryptically until it settles and amasses, only belatedly announcing the danger in the air-a displacement in time that Rob Nixon shows can make it hard to recognize a harm as violence. ${}^{11}$${}^{11}$^(11){ }^{11} Belatedly: sometimes hours after an exposure; sometimes years after a factory shuts down; too murky to pin on any single actor; too distributed to point to as a cause. And too dubious, according to those same plant managers who, when they are not busy spitting platitudes, are throwing up their hands about how hard it is to know and, so, to act on air pollution. Not because they doubt the fact of it but because there is “so much” of it, far too much to “wrap your brain around,” one boss told me
聽起來很溫柔。也許在槍聲響起時，就會有這種感覺。雖然槍支暴力發生在一瞬間，但塵埃卻神秘地移動，直到穩定下來並聚集起來，才姍姍來遲地宣告空氣中的危險——羅伯·尼克森 (Rob Nixon) 展示的時間錯位使得人們很難將傷害識別為暴力。 ${}^{11}$${}^{11}$^(11){ }^{11} 遲發性：有時在接觸病毒數小時後；有時工廠關閉數年後；太模糊，無法歸咎於任何單一演員；分佈過於分散，難以指出其原因。而那些工廠經理也認為這太可疑了，當他們不忙著說陳腔濫調時，他們就舉手錶示了解空氣污染情況有多麼困難，因此，採取行動應對空氣污染問題有多麼困難。一位老闆告訴我，這並不是因為他們懷疑事實，而是因為“太多了”，太多了，讓人“無法理解”。