Living Downstrram (S 28)

This article focuses on cancer and discusses how our environment plays a major role the dramatic increase in people with cancer. Sandra Steingraber talks about her experience with cancer. She was diagnosed with bladder cancer and discusses how many of her family members are also cancer prone despite the fact that she was adopted. She discusses how cancer has near nothing to do with genetics and is a result of our current life styles. Steingraber states that less then 10% of all cancers are inherited mutations. Sandra discusses how many of the known bladder carcinogens are still used and produced despite their known negative side effects (bladder cancer). Lastly, she discusses how many human rights are being broken with our current situation of the environment. She states that allowing ourselves to be in an environment that has untested chemicals and known carcinogens floating around freely is a “reckless disregard for human life”.

Effort needs to be made to further develop the study of the environments connection to cancer. It is now known that it is more then just POP’s in the environment that are causing cancer and other diseases. Dye’s that are used in clothing and printing have been listed as one of the leading causes of bladder cancer. Society needs to be made aware of these issues. The workers in factories that use these chemicals need to be made aware how severe the risk is of using these products. We have no control over our exposure to many of these chemicals due to the fact that they have been released into the air.  We as society have no choice but to be exposed to many of the chemicals that are currently circulating in our atmospheric environment, so we deserve to be educated on them. As Sandra stated; hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into cancer research and nearly none has been invested into the research of risks in our environment. This is shocking because the number of people who have died from cancer caused by environmental issues is very similar to the number of people who died from breast cancer. Headway needs to be made in the field of environmentally induced cancer before the issue becomes to big to handle. 

Below is a graph that shows the leading causes of cancer. "Pollution" is used to represent the category of environmental risks.