Plenary Speech by SANDRA STEINGRABER. Introduction by Charlotte Brody,
Director of Chemicals, Public Health and Green Chemistry at the BlueGreen
Alliance
This award-winning author, biologist and
specialist on environmental health explores the threats to climate and public health from extreme energy extraction
including hydraulic fracturing (fracking). From strip-mining of frack
sand in Wisconsin which releases carcinogenic silica dust into the air
-- to the deep-well injection of fracking waste in Ohio which has been
linked to earthquakes -- these new methods of blasting hydrocarbons from
the earth are shock-and-awe operations.
Of particular interest in this talk are the living organisms that inhabit
Earth's deep geological strata. Far from being inert, our nation's bedrock is
an underground “coral reef” of microbes, another invisible ecosystem that’s
linked in ways not yet fully understood to life here on the sunlit surface of
our planet.
Sandra Steingraber is a Ph.D. biologist, author and 2011 recipient of
the Heinz Award for her research and writing on environmental health. She
donated the $100,000 cash prize to the fight against hydraulic fracturing,
convening the grassroots coalition New Yorkers Against Fracking. In 2010, her
book Living Downstream on the
environmental links to cancer was released as a documentary film. Her most
recent book is Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of
Environmental Crisis.
