Cornell professor urges toxin awareness

A long-running battle with a ravaging disease infused Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. with the desire to educate others about environmental toxins. In a presentation Tuesday night in the Whittenberger Auditorium, the Cornell University researcher discussed the ecological effects of such toxins, focusing her lecture around tales of personal experience. \nSteingraber's personal experience with environmental contamination research, as well as her successful bout with bladder cancer potentially caused by ecological contamination, created a fresh perspective on the long-term effects of commercial and industrial byproducts. \n"Thirty-two years after the first Earth Day in 1970, the future looks bleak, and our current model of waste production grows like a global cancer," said Heather Reynolds, IU assistant professor of biology, who introduced Steingraber. \nSteingraber conducts research in Cornell University's program on breast cancer and environmental risk factors in New York. Her lecture focused on the specific experiences that culminated in her two books, "Living Downstream" and "Raising Faith." \nA toxin of local interest that highlighted the discussion Tuesday was the chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbon family known commonly as PCBs. PCBs are byproducts of electronic capacitor production. They have been known to cause mental birth defects in developing fetuses as well as inducing premature labor. Bloomington poses as a particular concern because it is a cleanup site for PCB residue left behind by defunct manufacturing plants.\nSteingraber approaches her research and presentations as a cancer survivor, mother and ecologist. Her experiences with cancer at age 20 gave her the drive to search for a link among cases and the presence of environmental toxins. She began to correlate toxin reports with the high rates of cancer in industrial areas. \nIn 1994, Steingraber began her systematic study of cancer and the environment and eventually expanded her work to include fetal toxicology research. \n"I became an environmental detective in my own back yard," Steingraber said. "I investigated cancer clusters denied by the health department to exist."\nAlthough some correlations between contamination and cancer existed in her hometown of Pekin, Ill., the long-range effect of environmental toxins was still a mystery.\n"No one study constitutes absolute proof, each study is a part of a jigsaw puzzle," Steingraber said. "Correlation does not show causation." \nThe hunt for answers on the effects of environmental toxins carried Steingraber around the world to research the advanced silting of the Blue Nile River in Sudan and to study PCB levels in the breast milk of indigenous tribes north of the Arctic Circle. What was once water or ground pollution becomes air pollution after incineration -- rising into the atmosphere to fall on nations far from a toxin's origin.\n "Old PCBs from capacitor production in Bloomington are lodged in the breasts of women north of the Arctic Circle," Steingraber said.\n Reynolds embraced the work of Steingraber and encouraged her to present her stories of struggle and triumph as a patient and as a researcher. Reynolds selected a chapter from the book, "Down Stream," to use as a course text.\n"I read her book and found it so compelling that I used a chapter in one of my undergraduate classes," Reynolds said.\nHer interest in sponsoring the lecture through the IU biology department spawned from her belief in being proactive when working with the environmental community of Bloomington, especially around Earth Day.\n"Dr. Sandra Steingraber seemed especially timely since issues of environmental toxins are the sleeping giants of our environment," she said.\nSteingraber encouraged awareness and activism as a way for IU students to take an active role in the education of the Bloomington community about the city's current ecological condition.\n"As a university student, you need to recognize your campus is part of the ecology of Bloomington," Steingraber said. "If you live in a contaminated environment, you are contaminated." \nThe roles of students in this drive for change and improvement are as varied as the effects of the toxins Bloomington residents are exposed to every day.\n"Whatever your interests are, there is a place for you in the burgeoning environmental issue," Steingraber said.\nJohn Blair, an Evansville photographer and ecological activist, closed the presentation with a call for local involvement. \n"There are only a few handfuls of people in the state willing to say, 'I've had it,'" Blair said. "We need to stand in unison and let Gov. O'Bannon and Lt. Gov. Kernan know we are fed up"