How to protect children from environmental threats

The nation’s children face an environment more threatening to their health than any generation in history, says Sandra Steingraber.

The ecologist, author, cancer survivor and international expert on environmental links to cancer will address those threats to children in an appearance as part of WMU’s University Center for the Humanities 2013-14 Changing Climates Series.

Steingraber will read from her book, “Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis.” Steingraber contends the intimate world of parenting connects closely to the public world of policy-making. The ongoing environmental crisis, she insists, is fundamentally a crisis of family life.

In “Raising Elijah” Steingraber confronts this crisis with precise science and a lyrical, witty, moving memoir, with each chapter focusing on one of the universals of childhood–milk, laundry, pizza, homework and the “big talk”–exploring the hidden, social political and historical forces behind them, says Western Michigan University.

With a doctoral degree in biology and a master’s in English, Steingraber speaks the language of  both scientists and activists and translates for both. She has testified in the European Parliament, before the United Nations and President’s Cancer Panel and in briefings to Congress. The author of “Living Downstream,” “Having Faith” and “Post-Diagnosis,” she is a scholar in residence at Ithaca College.

Steingraber will speak at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 13, in the Dalton Theatre of the Light Fine Arts Building at Kalamazoo College, 1200 Academy St. Her presentation is free and open to the public.

For more information, email the Center for the Humanities here or call the center at (269) 387-1811.

Source: Mark Schwerin, Western Michigan University