SS: For one, there is a double standard: the evidence for the link between, say, hereditary factors and cancer is actually not that strong, and we freely talk about the importance of family history to cancer patients. ML: Why aren't we told about all the evidence for the link between cancer and the environment? I decided that I wanted to bring the evidence that I knew as a biologist to other cancer patients and have my own life serve as a kind of bridge. This discontinuity was my motivating force for writing the book. It's my impression as a cancer patient that there is a disconnect between what we in the scientific community know about the evidence for the link, which is quite a lot, and what cancer patients are told when they talk to their doctors about it, which is very little. ML: How strong are the links between chemicals and cancer? It's a kind of love story between me and this place, but at the same time it's a scientific analysis. But I also care for the other people who live there, and I care for the river and the farm fields. I discover that there is a cancer cluster where I grew up and I'm one data point in that cluster. I really went in search of my own ecological roots and became an environmental detective. You see the story of my family, who still farm in Illinois and still use some toxic pesticides the story of the industrial chemicals that leaked into the drinking water wells there. It's a personal memoir, and interwoven between the scientific analysis is a story about my return home as a woman in my 30s, a biologist investigating the environmental toxins in her home town.

At the same time, as a cancer patient myself, it tells my own story of my diagnosis, aged 20, with bladder cancer, which has known links to the environment. Sandra Steingraber: It represents my best attempts as a biologist to summarise the state of the evidence for the link between cancer and the environment. Matilda Lee: Can you briefly explain the idea behind your book and film Living Downstream?

Living downstream by sandra steingraber