International Women’s Day 2018
Today my thoughts are centered on my brave beautiful daughter who is just recovering from breast cancer surgery. She has excellent prospects for a full and happy life, but I think of the many women who do not have such excellent care. I also am so thankful that the understanding and treatment are so much more advanced than when Rachel Carson faced a tragic encounter with this disease. In only a few decades the diagnosis of cancer has gone from a stigma and certain death sentence to a treatable condition.
I think of Rachel Carson who wrote much of Silent Spring while in serious suffering from the advanced
stages of breast cancer. She faced not only the lack of technology for diagnosis and treatment but also the difficulties of dealing with a male oriented medical establishment. Her courage in the face of her private and ultimately losing battle with cancer qualifies her as a heroine not only for the environmental movement but also for the millions of women who suffer the affliction of breast cancer.

“FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, EVERY HUMAN BEING IS NOW SUBJECTED TO CONTACT WITH DANGEROUS CHEMICALS, FROM THE MOMENT OF CONCEPTION UNTIL DEATH.”

                                                                                                                         RACHEL CARSON

 So many people deal with cancer now. Many have multiple tumors over a lifetime. Some explain the higher incidence of cancer to the longer life span in modern times. Others draw a strong correlation with the chemical stew that penetrates our bodies from birth to death. The average newborn child in America has over 200 synthetic chemicals in his or her body at birth, 79 of which are known mutagens and carcinogens.(1) While scientists continue to explore the causes of cancers, and some are better understood than others, there is a sinister accumulation of man-made materials that play a role in our collective vulnerability.
To make cancer a less prominent feature of our health expectations, we need to reduce the flow of toxic synthetic materials. The entire regulatory system is designed to try to limit the amount of toxics that can be released into the air or water. However, the additive effect of even permitted levels yields millions of pounds of toxic releases a year. (2) A better approach would limit the hazard of products  by design. This is the exciting field of Green Chemistry which can limit the amount of carcinogenic and mutagenic material in the air, water and land by designing materials that are benign and biodegradable by design. Prevention rather than dilution will produce better materials with less impact on the living Earth.

If we are to take a serious effort to control cancer and endocrine disruption for the next generation, we must begin by redirecting our materials supply chain away from fossil based precursors and toward biologically benign materials. The process of converting fossil based raw material to products and then to trash as quickly as possible is killing the living Earth. And as part of the creatures of the living Earth we are killing ourselves too. Green chemistry and bio-based materials as well as processes to remove and destroy synthetic hydrocarbons from water supplies holds great promise for a much more healthy and sustainable world.(3) Technology will not save us unless we add the Ethical element of choosing to pursue technologies that support and preserve the life support system of the Earth.