![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We are living downstream, watching the increasing flow of cancer, Steingraber says, but our efforts are so consumed in curing cancer that we forget to investigate its cause. ![]() Steingraber's writing is clear and concise, displaying complicated chemical and biological transformations with elegance and ease. In a chapter titled ""Fire,"" she describes the mass building of garbage incinerators throughout the country and how they have impacted our environment by creating cancer-causing agents like dioxin and furans. Using her home territory of Illinois as a backdrop, she successfully connects the environmental contamination of DDT, dioxin, PCB's and many other chemicals that increase the cancer rates both in nature and humans. Steingraber, a biologist, builds upon Carson's work, focusing on the link between chemicals in the environment and increasing cancer rates: ""From dry-cleaning fluids to DDT, harmful substances have trespassed into the landscape and have also woven themselves, in trace amounts, into the fibers of our bodies."" A cancer victim herself, Steingraber weaves a dark and pithy trail through the lives of cancer victims, their environments and increasing cancer rates. Thirty-five years ago, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring warned of the destructive impact of chemicals on the environment. ![]()
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