Chemicals and
Community Health

The following information comes from a variety of sources. The Center has tried to find writings that clearly explain very complex ideas in simple lay persons language. In all cases the sources are identified and reprinted with permission. Some are only sections from various articles. We hope this compilation helps to explain the link between cancer and what we are exposed to in our environment.

Cancer

Excerpt from Sandra Steingraber’s book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment:

"I had bladder cancer as a young adult. If I tell people this fact, they usually shake their heads. If I go on to mention that cancer runs in my family, they usually start to nod. She is from one of those cancer families, I can almost hear them thinking. Sometimes, I just leave it at that. But, if I am up to blank stares, I add that I am adopted and go on to describe a study of cancer among adoptees that found correlations within their adoptive families but not within their biological ones. ("Deaths of adoptive parents from cancer before the age of 50 increased the rate of mortality from cancer fivefold among the adoptees...Deaths of biological parents from cancer had no detectable effect on the rate of mortality from cancer among the adoptees.") At this point, most people become very quiet.

These silences remind me how unfamiliar many of us are with the notion that families share environments as well as chromosomes or with the concept that our genes work in communion with substances streaming in from the larger, ecological world. What runs in families does not necessarily run in blood. And our genes are less an inherited set of teacups enclosed in a cellular china cabinet than they are plates used in a busy diner. Cracks, chips and scrapes accumulate. Accidents happen."

 

Chemical Overload | Cancer Mechanisms | Breast Cancer
Endocrine Disruptors | Article: Cancer Clusters

See also the following websites:

To order book-Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber www.aw.com/gb

Rachel's Environmental Health Weekly www.monitor.net/rachel

Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ)
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Website: http://www.ccaej.org
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