Editor's Note from February 2023 Networker

In this month’s Networker, we have pieces that—in the case of two of the articles—treat us to the work of two SEHN colleagues who have long labored to expose and respond to the threat of chemicals and pollution in our environments. We also feature an exciting voice that’s new for us, that of Kelsey Breseman, Civic Science Fellow at the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI). Finally, you’ll enjoy meeting my longtime Concerned Health Professionals of New York collaborator, Dr. Larysa Dyrszka, featured in our second Celebrating our Colleagues column.

In my interview with SEHN’s science director, Ted Schettler, we discuss the remarkable project of a large interdisciplinary group of experts who recently published five interrelated papers, coupled with a public education campaign, on how science should be used to strengthen and focus the existing chemical regulatory system in the United States. So that it actually protects the full diversity of real people and communities. As Ted says, we should not expect less.

In her now-regular column, newly named the rePercussion Section (see her piece for the delightful explanation of this choice!), SEHN senior scientist Sandra Steingraber returns to her widely known expertise on both the science and human rights dimensions of exposure to carcinogens in the environment. February is both National Cancer Prevention Month and Black History Month, and Sandra does the necessary work of focusing in on the unconscionable—and very real—existence of a Black Cancer Alley along the lower Mississippi River. 

I met Kelsey Breseman when many of us started thinking about whether to abandon Elon Musk’s Twitter (we’re still deliberating!). Kelsey had reached out to folks from environmental nonprofits, offering a personal tutorial on how to migrate our followers and tweets over to the grassrootsy platform, Mastodon. I took her up on that for SEHN (in case SEHN does eventually leave Twitter), and before Kelsey and I signed off from that unexpectedly fun hour together, I had no trouble using my chutzpah to ask if she’d write a contributed article for the Networker. I’m so happy she accepted. In it, she writes personally, beautifully, and informatively about the work EDGI does “advancing a modernized Environmental Right to Know.” 

We have a long way to go before we truly have the “right to know, participate and decide” (Louisville Charter). But, even if you, like Ted and Sandra, have been focused on these problems for decades, the kinds of revelations, analyses, and roadmaps you’ll read in this edition will give you renewed energy for the fight. Let’s make it an especially meaningful National Cancer Prevention Month and Black History Month. 

Carmi Orenstein, MPH
CHPNY Program Director, SEHN