Cancer In the Air and Soil Around Us

 

Sandra Steingraber, environmental cancer

We know that some cancers are inherited. We know that if you use tobacco, you are likely to get lung cancer (John Updike). We know there are industrial carcinogens in the environment around us, although we may not be able to name one.

What Sandra Steingraber does in her 1997 book, Living Downstream, is document the cancer-causing chemicals in the air, water, and land. The World Health Organization estimates that 80-90% of cancers are instigated by environmental carcinogens, occupational risk factors, and lifestyle choices. In other words, these cancers are preventable. Only 5 to 10 % are hereditary. 

Sandra grew up in Pekin, Illinois, across the river from where I live in Peoria. Thirty years ago she investigated pesticide and industrial contamination from the surrounding farms and industries in central Illinois. She became concerned when she developed bladder cancer in her twenties, a cancer that is rare for anyone under the age of fifty to get. Bladder cancer is an old person’s disease, but it’s a cancer known to be caused by exposure to environmental carcinomas. Her community in Pekin had documented environmental contaminants, and this is probably what caused her cancer to form. Her adoptive family also developed various kinds of cancer. 

In 1991, Peoria and Tazwell Counties legally released 11.1 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land, and water. Valley Chemical left soil and water contamination. Pekin noticed and made efforts to protect its water supply and the Sankoty Aquifer that is under central Illinois from pesticide and industrial contaminants.

It’s well known that farmers in Illinois and Iowa have higher rates of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, melanoma, prostate, leukemia, and brain cancers from the pesticides and herbicides that are sprayed on crops. People who live in these states also have higher rates of cancer, and my oncologists have talked about this.

While individual causes of cancer may be hard to determine, when a cluster of cancer cases pop up in one neighborhood, the evidence points to an environmental cause like a toxic waste site nearby, pesticides in drinking water wells, and carcinogenic emissions from local industries. There was a breast cancer cluster on Long Island from pesticides that drifted in from far away. New Jersey had a cluster of leukemia, Iowa had lymphoma, Massachusetts had a cluster of childhood leukemia, and the list goes on. 

Pesticides sprayed on crops do not stay in the field. They evaporate and drift in the jet stream. They dissolve in water and flow into the rivers and our drinking water.

If you were a child in the 1960s, you remember the neighborhood foggers that drove around and sent up great clouds of DDT to control mosquitos. You may have played in the curiously-scented fog. Malathion was also used. These cancer-causing chemicals are still with us. Our children’s bodies become repositories for harmful chemicals in the air, food, water, and soil. DDT lingers for decades in the soil and accumulate in us as we age.

The focal point of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking 1962 book Silent Spring was on the use of synthetic pesticides like DDT for crops and the devastating birth defects that happened to the bald eagles and wildlife. Carson said “How strange to live in an age where carcinogens were a basic element of our system of food production.” Carson would die of breast cancer in 1964 at age 56. Jackie Kennedy Onassis was killed at age 64 by non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is often caused by pesticides and herbicides.

Each year in Illinois, some 161,441 tons of industrial waste are injected into bedrock caverns. In 1993, 91% of Illinois’s rivers and streams had pesticide contaminations. Today almost 100% are affected.

We have gotten better at treating cancer patients, Steingraber says, but we need to look upstream to see where the environmental contaminants are coming from. For us in central Illinois, besides local contamination, we have the industrial waste from Chicago coming down the Illinois River to us.

These are some of the dangerous chemicals: Atrazine is a herbicide used widely on cornfields and is suspected of causing breast and ovarian cancers. Synthetic dyes have been shown to cause bladder cancer. Plastic food wrap has phthalates that mess with your endocrine system. Benzene is a known carcinogen that is used as a solvent, added to gasoline to improve octane, and used in the manufacture of plastics. Every time we fill up our car, we inhale benzene. There is no safe level of benzene.

There is so much information in Sandra’s book that it’s hard to summarize all of her important details. Frankly, it’s depressing to find out how much we have allowed our environment to become polluted. Since the book came out, there has been widespread fracking around the country that has pumped millions and millions of gallons of industrial waste into the earth that find their way into our water, making it undrinkable. The emergence of data centers that consume vast amounts of energy and drinkable water is not going to help matters. It would be better if they could run on contaminated water that they reuse.

Yesterday, a report came out that said the FDA allows chemicals known by the EPA to cause cancer to be in our food or food preparation. Why?

Winona Laduke – “Why does wanting clean drinking water make you an activist, while poisoning it doesn’t make a corporation a terrorist?”

Sandra’s website: https://www.facebook.com/ssteingraber

© 2026 Mark Liebenow