Environmental Oncology

According to National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences data, environmental factors cause between 80 and 90 percent of all cancers. A recent event held at Fifth Avenue Place downtown was highlighted with a visit by the Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Devra Lee Davis. Ms. Davis also happens to be the best-selling author of When Smoke Ran Like Water and more recently The Secret History of the War on Cancer. The event was organized by The Green Appeal's friend Phyllis Barber, who is the Sustainability Coordinator (a title I wish I had) for Pittsburgh's Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield. Other guests included The Green Building Alliance, Urban Land Institute, The Rachel Carson Homestead, and Sustainable Pittsburgh.

The great aspect of this event was the community outreach, with its various participants bringing an array of environmental health issues (environmental oncology, watershed preservation, green building, sustainable development and conscientious diets and consumption) under one roof, providing visitors with several inlets to the larger umbrella of environmental stewardship, visitors who may have otherwise been more tentative to attend a conference on one particular subject. Say for example, global warming, which in the media too often consumes every other environmental topic by its headline grabbing politics, thus unfortunately continuing to polarize American culture. I find it extremely disheartening that people, particularly popular figures in the media, continue to expend energy attempting to debunk human-caused climate change, it's a line of argument which seems practically a non-factor, in that such a train of thought apparently runs parallel with rejecting any notions concerning the concept of pollution.