BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Environmental author and activist Sandra Steingraber returned to her alma mater at Illinois Wesleyan University on Monday, Oct. 18 to donate her papers to a new special collection at The Ames Library, and to discuss her writings that bring awareness to the link between cancer and the environment. The struggle is a personal one for Steingraber, who not only is a noted biology researcher, but is also a cancer survivor.
Fighting a ‘chemical trespass’
Steingraber, a 1981 Illinois Wesleyan graduate who is the author of two books with a third to be published in 2011, led the audience in Hansen Student Center on a very personal journey. She condemned manmade toxins in the environment as a threat to her children, and all children. She called toxins, such as the chemical herbicide atrazine used heavily in Illinois as a corn herbicide, a “chemical trespass” and “violation” of the safety of children.
“There is a crisis arising,” said Steingraber, who is a scholar in residence at Ithaca College in New York, and is traveling around the Midwest to help promote a new documentary that follows her professional and personal challenges in battling cancer. “It is really a crisis of family life, which is robbing parents of the right to keep their children safe from harm.”