Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D

The Earth Day 2002 celebration will kick off on Thursday evening, April 18th with a special presentation by Dr, Sandra Steingraber. Internationally recognized ecologist and author of Living Down Stream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment, Dr. Steingraber will share her personal and professional expertise on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health.

Ecologist, author, and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health. She received her doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan and master’s degree in English from Illinois State University. She has taught biology at Columbia College, Chicago, held visiting fellowships at the University of Illinois, Radcliffe/Harvard, and Northeastern University, and served on President Clinton’s National Action Plan on Breast Cancer, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Dr Steingraber’s highly acclaimed 1997 book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment, presented cancer as a human rights issue. It was the first to bring together data on toxic releases—made available under right-to-know laws—with newly released data from U.S. cancer registries. Living Downstream won praise from international media, including The Washington Post, The Nation, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, The Lancet, and The London Times. In 1999 the Sierra Club heralded Steingraber as "the new Rachel Carson." And in 2001 Carson’s own alma mater, Chatham College, selected Steingraber to receive its biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award.

Continuing the investigation begun in Living Downstream, Steingraber’s new work, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood, explores the intimate ecology of motherhood. An enthusiastic and sought-after public speaker, Steingraber has keynoted conferences on human health and the environment throughout the United States and Canada and has been invited to lecture at many universities, medical schools, and teaching hospitals including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In 1999, as part of international treaty negotiations, she briefed U.N. delegates in Geneva, Switzerland on dioxin contamination of breast milk. Sandra Steingraber is currently a member of the faculty at Cornell University’s Center for the Environment in Ithaca, New York.

Dr. Steingraber’s visit is presented by the Western New York Presbytery and the University at Buffalo Environment and Society Institute. Dr Steingraber will speak on Thursday April 18th at 7PM in Allen Hall on the University at Buffalo South Campus and then again on Friday April 19th at 1:30 PM in the Center for the Arts at the University at Buffalo North Campus. Both programs are free and open to the public. WBFO 88.7 will also broadcast Dr. Steingraber’s Thursday night presentation live on the radio.