Environmental activist, author to speak at SUNY Adirondack

Sandra Steingraber, author of “Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment,” will speak on Oct. 28 at SUNY Adirondack.

Steingraber will present "Mission Driven Action & the Loss of the Commons: What It Means for the Environment," a lecture and question-and-answer session, at 12:30 p.m. in the Northwest Bay Conference Center in Adirondack Hall on the Queensbury campus. A reception and “Resource Cafe,” organized by North Country Climate Reality, will follow the presentation.

The author also will offer an introduction to a screening of “Unfractured” at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 28 at Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls. The 2017 film documents her environmental activism against the fracking industry.

Steingraber is a biologist and cancer survivor who received acclaim after writing “Living Downstream,” the first book to bring together data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries. The project was adapted for the screen into a feature-length documentary in 2010. She is also the author of “Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood” and “Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis.”

Steingraber has been named a Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine, a Person of the Year by Treehugger and one of 25 “Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” by the Utne Reader. She is the recipient of the biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award and the Jenifer Altman Foundation’s Altman Award for “the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer.” Steingraber received a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund and the Environmental Health Champion Award from Physicians for Social Responsibility in Los Angeles.

The programming, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by SUNY Adirondack, Crandall Public Library and North Country Climate Reality.