Forbes: Twenty Thousand Breaths A Day: How The Environment Shapes The Health Within Us

I spent much of my early career looking directly at hearts and lungs through an opened chest in the operation room. As a heart and lung transplant surgeon, I saw these organs at their most vulnerable. A failing heart, scarred lungs, impaired circulation, and inadequate oxygen. In the operating room, disease is never abstract. It is an intensely physical reality.

Over time, and later through my work for 12 years in the U.S. Senate, I came to think more broadly about what makes people sick in the first place. We rightly focus on blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, genetics, infection, diet, and exercise. But another set of equally powerful forces is acting on us every day: the air we breathe, the heat we endure, the smoke we inhale, the landscapes surrounding us, and the chronic stress created by environmental disruption.

VIEW THE STORY AT FORBES