Section 7.0: Introduction
Module 7: Regional Case Example: SW Pennsylvania
Environmental and occupational cancer risks don’t follow state lines. They cluster around watersheds, airsheds, industrial corridors, and among frontline workers and fenceline neighborhoods. Most cancer risk reduction strategies are organized at the state level, reflecting the focus of support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, reducing environmental and occupational cancer risk is not solely the work of state cancer coalitions, it is also the work of:
- County and municipal health departments
- Regional public health and cancer networks
- Local elected and appointed officials
- Community-based and advocacy organizations
- Health care systems and clinicians
- Frontline workers and residents who live nearest the exposures
Why Southwestern Pennsylvania
Few regions illustrate this need and opportunity for environmental and occupational cancer risk reduction as clearly as Southwestern Pennsylvania, where the Cancer and Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania (CENSWPA) operates. The region gave the country the 1948 Donora smog disaster — the event that helped catalyze modern clean air policy. More than a century of steelmaking, coke production, and coal mining also left a legacy of contaminated air, soil, and water that today overlays a very active industrial landscape, including:
- Roughly half of Pennsylvania’s unconventional natural gas wells
- The Shell Polymers Monaca ethane cracker
- U.S Steel’s Clairton coke works, largest coke manufacturing operation in the country
Yet the region is also the source of great potential. Concentrated industrial pollution has driven sustained scientific attention. A strong labor tradition coupled with a deep awareness and dedication to remedying environmental injustices, a county-level public health department with regulatory authorities that few other parts of Pennsylvania possess, and a regional cancer-and-environment network coordinating more than fifty organizations have built a capacity that can serve as a model for action elsewhere.
Environmental and occupational cancer prevention remains under-prioritized relative to the burden it carries — a pattern Southwestern Pennsylvania shares with much of the country. What the region demonstrates, both what is possible and what remains undone, speaks to a similar need and opportunity in many other states and regions across the United States.
Key Takeaways
- Environmental and occupational risk reduction efforts are not exclusive to federal and state entities; local sectors and communities possess political power to influence cancer risk reduction strategies.
- Other regions invested in environmental and occupational cancer risk reduction can use SWPA as a model given their multi-coalition approach to systems change.