My mother and I recently walked together along a corridor that connects the parking garage to the main elevators of St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, Illinois. It's an ordinary walkway, and yet it holds extraordinary memories for each of us.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at the...

Mounting evidence suggests that exposures to chemical contaminants within our shared environment are playing a more significant role than previously appreciated in the burden of human cancer.

Vows of marriage. Oaths of citizenship. A jury's verdict. Words with the power to change our identities are usually spoken in...

Does fracking kill more people than it employs?

"Your silence will not protect you." --Audre Lorde

On July 18, the Democratic Conference of the New York Senate held a forum on allegations of government-industry collusion in the creation and revision of a scientific...

Less like a pot of gold, more like a waste dump.

"Gilded tombs do worms enfold." -- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

The United States, as it turns out, has a lot of unburned natural gas. It's trapped as tiny bubbles in our shale bedrock. Through the technique called...

Oxymorons in the gas patch.

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!... cold fire, sick health! -- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

On May 2, an alliance of citizen groups from around the nation issued a call to action against unsafe gas and oil drilling and announced a national rally to...

In praise of unfractured rock.

Everywhere is holy. -- Allen Ginsberg, "Footnote to Howl," Howl, and Other Poems

In honor of both National Poetry Month and Earth Day -- and with thanks to the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who continues to inspire...

Hints: Go for June, skip the drugs, embrace Descartes.

"Why don't people get screened? Sometimes the screening recommendations ... are confusing to patients." -- Dr. James S. Goodwin, University of Texas

It's April. I'm going to guess that you ignored the fact that March was

Fracking is a hostage exchange program. Only the carcinogens go free.

"Shale development has been a nightmare for those exposed to the resulting pollution." -- Food and Water Europe, "Fracking: The New Global Water Crisis Fact Sheet"

Why should cancer patients in the United States and Canada...

Two cancer narratives compete for the president's attention - and for ours.

The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated.
- Letter to President Obama from the President's Cancer Panel, April 2010

On May 21,...

The new President's Cancer Panel report on the environment shows us where to begin a meaningful program of cancer prevention.

This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, has a just claim to your confidence and support.
- George Washington (inscribed on the wall of the...

A recently released report from the President's Cancer Panel finds that the environment plays a much bigger role in the story of human cancer than previously appreciated. The Congressional briefing organized to discuss these results played to a full house.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural...

In Canada, redefining the word trash may send engineers back to their drawing boards -- and keep dioxins out of the food chain.

Fatalism is a form of compliance disguised as realism.
- Eileen Crist, from "Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse" in Telos

The smell of lawn chemicals is as dependable a harbinger of spring as robins and lilacs. Not in big parts of Canada, where many municipalities and provinces have opted to abolish the cosmetic use of pesticides on the grounds that the links between pesticide exposure and childhood cancer are too...

The pesticide atrazine - with its possible links to breast cancer - is making headlines as the EPA opens a new investigation and a member of Congress calls for its outright abolition. What does the leading breast cancer advocacy organization say about atrazine? Nothing. It's busy peddling pink buckets of...

Living each day as if it were your last is not all it's cracked up to be. In fact, discounting the future and ignoring the past is how we've contaminated the earth with toxic chemicals in the first place.

Confine thyself to the present. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

In 1997,...

A funny thing happened on the way to making a documentary film about, among other things, my life as a longtime cancer survivor. With the cameras rolling, I received some unsettling medical news.

this is the dress rehearsal / when the body / like a constant lover / flirts...

With the Relay for Life season upon us, I am less interested in celebrating my own survival from cancer and more interested in abolishing carcinogens so that my own two children will never have to run the survivors' lap of honor.

As we pour our millions into research and invest...

Every spring semester, the great triumvirate of commemorative events - Black History Month, Women's History Month, and Earth Day - arrives on college campuses as predictably as the return of robins. As a woman scientist who is called forth to podiums across the nation during two of the three months...

Three decades ago, my adoptive mother and I both became cancer patients. The way we each reacted to our new identities was a study in contrasts, but growing public awareness of cancer's environmental roots has now brought us, unexpectedly, back together.

"The history of cancer is long, but our...