There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.

Robert Orben (1927–2023) was an American comedy writer and speechwriter known for topical one-liners and satirical observations that often circulated in joke books and newspaper humor columns. This quip reflects the heightened public anxiety about smog and industrial emissions that became a mainstream political issue in the United States in the 1960s–1970s, around the rise of modern environmental regulation and Earth Day-era rhetoric. Orben’s humor typically reframed current events through a punchline that exposes an uncomfortable truth—in this case, that pollution has become so pervasive it is treated as an unavoidable “substance” society must somehow accommodate.

The joke hinges on a grim inversion: lungs, meant to take in life-giving air, are recast as storage space for society’s waste. By treating pollution as something that needs “a place to put it,” Orben satirizes collective complacency and the externalization of environmental costs onto human bodies. The line compresses a moral critique into a simple absurdity—if the air is saturated, the only remaining “container” is us—highlighting how environmental degradation turns public space (the atmosphere) into a private health burden. Its effectiveness lies in making an invisible hazard feel immediate and personal.