Sandra Steingraber, biologist and author, will speak on how everyday environmental chemicals can enter our bodies and raise risks for health problems at important stages of life in her talk "Contaminated Without Consent: How Chemical Pollutants in Air, Food, and Water Sabotage Human Development and Violate Human Rights."
A cancer survivor and mother of two, Steingraber uses her own experiences and expertise to study human ecology. She has been described as a translator between scientist and activist and has keynoted conferences on human health and the environment throughout the country. She has been invited to lecture at many universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Cornell as well as at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
Steingraber is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Ithaca College and is involved in its ongoing sustainability efforts. She serves on the board of the Science and Environmental Health Network and is the author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment and Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood. She received her doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan and master's degree in English from Illinois State University.
Her talk coincides with the 100th birthday celebration of notable ecologist Rachel Carson, who first focused the public's attention on the health impacts of chemicals like DDT in humans and animals. Steingraber was named the "new Rachel Carson" by the Sierra Club in 1999 and later received the biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award from Carson's own alma mater, Chatham College.
This event is co-sponsored by the Sustainability Roundtable and the Environmental Health Sciences Center. The Sustainability Roundtable is a group of faculty and students interested in promoting environmental sustainability in the curriculum and campus of the University of Rochester. The Environmental Health Sciences Center supports this lecture as part of its ongoing efforts to respond to the community's needs for information about how toxic chemicals in the environment affect human health.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact (585) 273-4304.