acknowledgments for the second edition

 

 

 

 

Over the years, many people have commented to me on the length of this book’s acknowledgment section. My response is that any book that ranges as widely across biological disciplines as this one requires many different eyes to vet it. The original acknowledgments section is reprinted below, along with the original affiliations of my critical readers—some of whom have since moved on to other posts. Of course, responsibility for accuracy continues to belong only to me.

During the process of revising and updating the book for this second edition, as well as during the process of creating the film version of Living Downstream, I have accumulated other significant debts. The biggest of these are to my husband, Jeff, and our two children, Faith and Elijah. A book project is like a houseguest who refuses to leave and talks too much. A book project that involves a film crew in the living room at 6 A.M. is like a houseguest who invites all his friends over. As my children freely point out to me, books are rude.

Second only to those who share my street address is Merloyd Lawrence, who has patiently conducted me through innumerable drafts over many years. Having Merloyd as my editor for both editions of Living Downstream (as well as for Having Faith and my forthcoming book on children’s environmental health) makes me—quoting my children again—a lucky duck.

During the months of rewriting, many farmers and librarians plied me with organic food and research materials. In at least one case, the farmer and the librarian are the same individual: John Henderson, reference librarian at Ithaca College, also sells me salad greens and heirloom garlic at my village farmers’ market—sometimes while discussing my latest interlibrary loan request. Thanks to all the farmers at the Trumansburg Farmers Market, as well as to Paul Martin and Evangeline Sarat, who operate the Sweetland Farm CSA—only a half-mile from my home—providing me year-round food security in the form of eggs, beets, and a chest freezer full of green beans and strawberries . . . along with the chance to revise chapters in my head while picking sugar peas. Paul and Evangeline also shared with me their expert knowledge of organic pest control methods.

I am especially grateful to documentary film producer and director Chanda Chevannes of The People’s Picture Company, Inc., who found a way to capture on camera the lyric beauty of my home state, my private life as a medical patient, and the scientific argument contained within these pages—and then shaped it all into a coherent cinematic story. From the start, Chanda possessed an uncanny fluency with the language of this book as well as a mastery of the science. As our collaboration continued, I began to see Chanda as a coauthor. Her insights showed me where and how the book could be revised. I thank also her film crew for their boundless patience with me as I struggled to overcome my self-consciousness with cameras and boom mikes: Nathan Shields, Benjamin Gervais, Trent Richmond, P. Marco Veltri, Larissa Shames, Rebecca Rosenberg, Joshua Kraemer, Zachary Pedersen, Bill Pope, Bryant Cardona, Michelle Mac-Lachlan, Garrett Shields, Jill Chevannes, and Liz Armstrong. The film’s funders and supporters include The Ceres Trust, the Tides Foundation, the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, Park Foundation, Canadian Auto Workers-Social Justice Fund, Doris Cadoux and Hal Schwartz, Ya Ya Sistahs & Bruddahs Too! Cancer Prevention Challenge Team, and organizational partners Women’s Healthy Environments Network and Insight Productions.

During the making of the film, Marge Melchers, Terra Brockman, Joel Smith, and Henry Brockman provided locally grown, organic food and reintroduced me to the riverbanks, floodplains, and bottomlands of central Illinois. My mother Kathryn Steingraber opened her home and her heart to me and the film crew, as did my cousin John and his wife Emily, who gave up a day of work on a rainless Monday in July to recreate on camera the farm scenes in Chapter Seven. This is no small sacrifice for Illinois farmers. My conversations with John on camera gave me new insights about farm chemicals, which helped guide my revisions of the book. My Uncle Roy and Aunt Ann, whose farm appears in Chapter Ten, likewise offered their enthusiasm and intimate knowledge of agriculture. The Land Connection, which found new owners for the farm after the death of my grandmother in 2006, deserves credit not only for saving our family’s farm but for helping rebuild regional food security throughout Illinois by finding land for young organic farmers. My family’s farm in Pleasant Ridge Township, which is now a completely organic operation, is only one beneficiary of The Land Connection’s good work. By fostering sustainable, community-based food systems, The Land Connection is providing solutions to the problems I identify in Chapters One, Seven, and Ten.

For fact checking and manuscript commentary on this second edition, I thank Joyce Blumenshine, Terra Brockman, Charlotte Brody, Julia Brody, Dick Clapp, Terrence Collins, Kamyar Enshayan, Jeanne Handy, Tim LaSalle, Dave Miller, Carmi Orenstein, Susan Richardson, Ruthann Rudell, Jennifer Sass, Ted Schettler, Joel Smith, John Spinelli, and Gina Solomon.

My knowledge of cancer biology has been deepened by my advisory work with the California Breast Cancer Research Program. As a steering committee member on CBCRP’s Special Research Initiative, I had the opportunity to review the literature on the environmental links to breast cancer and, together with an expert strategy team, identify the gaps in this body of research in need of targeted funding. Our 2007 draft report, Identifying Gaps in Breast Cancer Research: Addressing Disparities and the Roles of the Physical and Social Environment, informs my analysis of breast cancer herein. For this, I thank CBCRP’s director, Marion Kavanaugh-Lynch, MD, PhD, along with Catherine Thomsen, MPH, and Marj Plumb, DrPH, and my fellow steering committee members: Julia Brody, PhD, executive director of the Silent Spring Institute; Olufunilayo I. Olopade, MD, University of Chicago Medical Center; Susan Matsuko Shinagawa, Asian and Pacific Islander National Cancer Survivors Network; and David R. Williams, PhD, Harvard School of Public Health. Likewise, my commissioned work in 2007 for the Breast Cancer Fund on the causes of early puberty in girls deepened my understanding of the biology of breast development, and insights gleaned from that research project are now woven into these chapters. Thanks especially to Jeanne Rizzo, Tamara Adkins, Brynn Taylor, Janet Nudelman, and Nancy Evans.

I am also grateful to members of Cornell University’s Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors, where I served as a visiting scholar from 1999 to 2003. My colleagues there, Suzanne Snedeker, PhD, and Carmi Orenstein, MPH, continue to answer my queries, forward data, critique my writing, and point me in new directions. Their influence is particularly evident in Chapters Six and Eleven.

I have also learned much from my colleagues at the Science and Environmental Health Network, on whose board I sit. SEHN’s ongoing work on the Precautionary Principle, ecological medicine, and chemicals policy reform is unsurpassed. For their generous tutelage in all these areas, I thank this organization’s staff and board.

At Ithaca College, where I now serve as scholar in residence, a cadre of able librarians has assisted me in myriad ways. Tanya Saunders, PhD, dean of the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies, has provided me a wonderful academic base of operations. I am grateful, too, to Marian Brown, PhD, and Susan Allen-Gil, PhD, director of the Environmental Studies Program.

For enabling my work in direct and indirect ways, I thank Adelaide Park Gomer of the Park Foundation and Marni Rosen of the Jenifer Altman Foundation. I also thank Janet Wallace of the Wallace Global Fund; Pete Myers, PhD, of Environmental Health Sciences; Michael Lerner, PhD, of Commonweal; Liz Armstrong of Prevent Cancer Now; and Janet Collins. And a special thanks to Judy Kern.

For helping me carry the message of Living Downstream into universities, town hall meetings, medical schools, public libraries, county fairs, church basements, and international conferences, I thank Jodi Solomon, Bill Fargo, and Stacy Borden at the Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau in Boston. For bringing its message to these pages, I thank my literary agent, Charlotte Sheedy.

I thank my urologist Sanjeev Vohra, MD, for letting us film my annual cystoscopy, thereby pulling back the curtain of privacy on a cancer-screening procedure that saves lives and yet is unfamiliar to (or feared by) many people. I thank Dr. Vohra again for his compassion and due diligence as my physician.

Finally, I thank members of my extended family who have generously shared with me their knowledge of my biological roots. I am particularly grateful to Doris and Arne Petersen of Palo Alto, California, and to Steve and Alice Kauble of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and their daughter Sarah.