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Westminster College to Host Award-Winning Author and Scientist on Chemical Contamination and Human Rights

Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Dr. Sandra Steingraber, an internationally recognized expert on environmental links to cancer and reproductive health, will present "Contaminated without Consent: How Chemical Pollutants in Our Food and Water Violate Human Rights" Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 7 p.m. in Orr Auditorium.

The presentation is free and open to the public and is part of Westminster's Distinguished Speaker Series "Perspectives on the Environment," funded by a grant from the Lewis Foundation. Visit www.westminster.edu/acad/drinko for more information about the series.

Steingraber, an ecologist and cancer survivor, was the first to bring together data on toxic chemical releases with newly released information from U.S. cancer registries, resulting in her book Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment.

Her most recent book, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, follows her own pregnancy as a means of investigating fetal toxicology, describing a mother's body as a child's first habitat. Having Faith reveals the alarming extent to which environmental hazards now threaten each crucial stage of human development. The book's findings were featured on Bill Moyers' PBS documentary "Kids and Chemicals."

Copies of Having Faith are available for purchase in Westminster's bookstore. Steingraber will be signing books following the lecture.

"Dr. Steingraber expertly and eloquently connects science to people's lives, bringing meaning and urgency to issues of chemical contamination and public health," said Dr. Shahroukh Mistry, Westminster associate professor of biology and coordinator of the speaker series. "This speaker series is an important step toward developing an interdisciplinary and cooperative approach to engaging students in becoming knowledgeable and responsible stewards of the natural world and their communities."

Contact Mistry at (724) 946-7210 or e-mail mistrys@westminster.edu for additional information.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber