Resources

Linda Lear is the author of the acclaimed biography of Rachel Carson, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature,(just republished 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Steingraber's testimony to the President's Cancer Panel is prominently cited in the panel's groundbreaking report. The report, "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now" makes a paradigm shift that more directly links cancer to environmental factors.

Read Sec:2:2, Sec:2:39, Sec:2:45 in the report for excerpts of Sandra Steingraber's testimony.

Read the President's Cancer Panel's Report.    Read media coverage.

http://www.billmckibben.com/
An American environmentalist and writer, Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign. This October 10, 350.org is organizing the second annual 350 International Day of Climate Action, with thousands of events planned at iconic places around the world. Bill frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. Beginning in the summer of 2006, he led the organization of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history. McKibben is active in the Methodist Church, and his writing sometimes has a spiritual bent.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/
Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about “all our stuff—where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.” Leonard examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and she isolates the moment in history when she says the trend of consumption mania began.

http://www.theppcinc.com/
The People’s Picture Company Inc. is a small production and production services company located in Toronto, Canada. They specialize in documentary films and educational projects, including a film version of Living Downstream based on Sandra's book. They offer a broad range of production services, including: producing, directing, production management, offline editing, online editing and animation.

www.beyondpesticides.org
A non-profit organization that identifies the risks of pesticides, promotes non-chemical alternatives, and assists individuals and community-based organizations struggling with issues involving pesticides—from golf courses and schools to lawn care and food production. Provides databases and fact sheets.

www.bcaction.org
A membership organization that advocates for policy changes directed at the prevention of breast cancer and the development of safer, more effective treatments.  Provides information on causes of breast cancer and access to health care.  Watchdogs the pharmaceutical industry and the cause-based marketing of breast cancer. 

www.breastcancerfund.org
A non-profit organization that identifies, and advocates for the elimination of, the environmental causes of breast cancer.  Provides reports and fact sheets.

www.safecosmetics.org/
www.cosmeticdatabase.org
A coalition of organizations seeking to require the personal care products industry to eliminate the use of chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects.  The Environmental Working Group, one of its founding members, has created the searchable Skin Deep database that profiles 25,000 personal care products and their ingredients. 

www.healthandenvironment.org
www.database.healthandenvironment.org/
A network of more than 3000 individual and organizations working to address growing concerns about the links between human health and environmental factors.  The Toxicant and Disease Database summarizes links between chemical contaminants and 180 human diseases. 

www.cancer.ca
The Canadian version of the American Cancer Society advocates for the identification of environmental carcinogens and their elimination through substituting safer alternatives.

www.healthyenvironmentforkids.ca
An affiliation of Canadian groups working on protecting children from environmental contaminants.

www.endocrinedisruption.com
A nonprofit organization that compiles scientific evidence on the health and environmental problems caused by exposure to chemicals that interfere with hormones, with a special focus on development. 

www.environmentalhealthnews.org
A syndication service that is published daily by Environmental Health Sciences. It both publishes its own articles and offers summaries of articles published in referenced journals as well as a daily digest of articles on environmental health topics, including cancer, that are published each day in the world press.  I subscribe to its free daily e-letter, Above The Fold.

www.ewg.org
A nonproft organization that works to protect infants, children, and pregnant women from toxic contaminants through public education while simultaneously pushing for national policy change.  EWG conducts body burden monitoring (of both people and pets) and tests drinking water. Its searchable database of water quality reports is excellent. 

http://www.env-health.org/
http://www.chemicalshealthmonitor.org
The European sister organization of the Collaborative on Health and Environment.  HEAL, located in Brussels, Belgium, oversees a project called Chemicals Health Monitor that provides a comprehensive compilation of recent information and evidence about the links between chemical contaminants in
the environment and human health problems. HEAL provides news on chemical safety policy, especially the EU legislation called REACH, and on human biomonitoring.

www.chemsec.org
A non-profit organization in Sweden that serves as a watchdog for the legislative process and implementation of the European Union’s chemical policy REACH, which entered into force in June 2007.  It seeks the elimination of hazardous substances and is the standard-bearer of the Precautionary Principle in Europe. 

www.thelandconnection.org
An Illinois-based non-profit organization that promotes community-based, organic food systems by training new farmers ?and connecting them with farmland.  Thanks to this organization, my family’s four-generation farm is, once again, an organic operation.

http://seer.cancer.gov/
The premier source for cancer statistics in the United States, SEER collects information on incidence from geographic areas representing 26 percent of the United States and cancer mortality data for the whole nation.  The Cancer Stat Fact Sheets provide recent statistics for each type of cancer.

www.ec.gc.ca/inrp-npri/
Canada’s legislated inventory of pollutant releases to air, water, and land.  Maintained by Environment Canada.

www.panna.org
www.pesticideinfo.org/
A non-profit organization that promotes the elimination of highly hazardous pesticides and offers a pesticide database on toxicity and regulatory information, including data on pesticide use in California.

www.silentspring.org
www.silentspring.org/sciencereview
A partnership of scientists, physicians, public health advocates, and community activists that works to identify the links between the environment and women’s health, especially breast cancer.  Silent Spring Institute provides a database on the 216 different chemicals shown to cause mammary gland cancer in animals, including individual study results, chemical regulatory status, and likely sources of exposure.  It provides another searchable database on the 450 primary epidemiologic research articles on breast cancer and environmental pollutants. 

http://chm.pops.int/
A global treaty to protect human health and the environment from inherently toxic chemicals that remain intact in the environment for a long time and travel far from their points of manufacture and use.  Because of their propensity for long-range transport, no one nation state acting alone can protect its citizens from persistent organic pollutants.  Administered by the United Nations, the treaty was adopted in 2001, enacted into international law in 2004.  At this writing, the treaty calls for the worldwide phase-out from use and production of 21 chemicals and requires parties to take measures to eliminate or reduce the release of these substances into the environment.  164 nations are parties to the Stockholm Convention.  At this writing, the United States is not.  

Environmental Protection Agency:  www.epa.gov/triexplorer
Right-to-Know Network:  www.rtk.net
There are two ways of acquiring environmental data available to the public under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).  One is through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is the branch of the federal government charged with administering EPCRA and maintaining the TRI.  The other venue is the Right-to-Know Network, which advocates for improved access to government-held information on the environment, health, and safety. RTK Network puts TRI data together with other environmental data—such as hazardous waste and spill and accident reports. Both the EPA and RTK Net host excellent web sites with mapping features that allow searches by chemical, by facility, or by ZIP code.

www.toxipedia.org
A wiki-website created to bring experts and lay people together in order to provide educational materials on public and environmental health. 

"Write with precision, clarity and economy. Every sentence should convey the exact truth as simply as possible."
—Instructions to Authors, Ecology 1964

http://www.bms.bc.ca/resources/library/pdf/GuidelinesScientificPapers.pdf
from http://biology.uncc.edu/

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/issue/29/

Issue 29 of Orion Magazine features articles by Bill McKibben (global warming's effects on the pacific islands) and Mary O'Brien (the erosion of participatory democracy in the sphere of environmental decisions).