The Cancer and Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania brings together diverse organizations to work together at the intersection of production, consumption, pollution and disease prevention. All of us are committed to changing a system that exposes people to unhealthy environments and imposes high costs of health care on families and institutions. The “lens” of cancer brings a unique constellation of groups to the table and makes possible the engagement of constituencies not typically involved in environmental health.
As a network grounded in science and systems thinking, we prioritize three tiers of collaboration. The first is co-learning: sharing information, lived experiences and insights. The second is mutual support: lifting up initiatives of participating organizations so that others in the network can add their voices and align their activities. The third is collaboration on co-created projects designed to fill important gaps or leverage systems change. Our staffing, structures and practices nurture all three of these tiers.
There are no open positions at this time.
Our Network gathers quarterly to hear from content experts and identify synergies across our many projects, meets regularly in project-based Action Teams, and sends a Monthly Digest of news, resources and events relevant to cancer and the environment.
Will you join us?
“In Southwestern Pennsylvania, there is a need for bold action on a cancer prevention strategy that is often overlooked: reducing environmental chemicals that are put into our air, water, food, homes, workplaces, and products.”
Read the full declaration and consider joining dozens of other signatories who have “come together to lift up a vision of a region where clean environments generate health and well-being on their way to reversing cancer rates.”
Read “A Science Companion Document” for the declaration and learn more about the science justifying attention and action on environmental cancer risks. Also read a recent fact sheet reviewing data from the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) that documents cancer risks from air pollution in the region.
“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.”
ARTICLE 1, SECTION 27, PA CONSTITUTION
The World Health Organization’s Asturias Declaration is a call for leadership to prevent occupational and environmental cancers1. In this tenth anniversary year, we take it as inspiration to chart a course towards an equitable future where no individual in our region is diagnosed with cancer due to exposures in the environments where they live, work, play and go to school. Signers of this “Southwestern Pennsylvania Declaration” recognize that realizing this vision will require concerted action by multiple sectors, and centering voices of people disproportionately harmed. We commit to taking actions currently available to us and to seeking new solutions with new partners; and we call on our neighbors, colleagues, elected officials and other leaders to do the same.
Cancer develops from a combination of genetic and external risk factors, a series of interactions, much like electric circuitry, where many components need to be in place to cause a light to turn on. In the case of environmental chemicals, exposure to any one pollutant may pose only a small increased risk of cancer in an individual, but if exposures to that pollutant are widespread and occur in most people, even small increases in individual risk can result in significant numbers of cases in the general population. Beyond that, when most people are exposed to multiple substances that increase cancer risk to varying degrees in various ways, that too can result in significant numbers of cases in the population. The more a population is exposed, the greater the number of cases of cancer that can be prevented by reducing those exposures.
Cancers ravage people in Southwestern Pennsylvania. As community leaders, parents and caregivers, health care providers, business owners, researchers, advocates—we all want to do everything we can to support them and prevent others from having to face a cancer diagnosis.
In our region, we have taken important steps on cancer prevention—with programs and policies to reduce smoking and promote healthy lifestyles. These are important priorities—particularly when they address the structural barriers, rooted in racism, that put healthy lifestyles out of reach. But they are not enough, especially given the substantial contribution of factors other than smoking to cancer incidence in particular places across the country, including Allegheny County2. Rates of many kinds of cancer are strikingly high in our region—higher than the state and nation—with disproportionate burdens on people of color and marginalized communities3. In Southwestern Pennsylvania, there is need for bold action on a cancer prevention strategy that is often overlooked: reducing environmental chemicals that are put into our air, water, food, homes, workplaces, and products.
People living in urban and rural communities in Southwestern Pennsylvania are exposed unnecessarily to environmental carcinogens.
These include radon, the second leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S. behind smoking; Pennsylvania ranks third among all states for levels of radon in homes4. They include toxic chemicals in air pollution: 96% percent of counties nationwide have lower cancer risks from hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) and Diesel Particulate Matter (DPM) than Allegheny County5. Among predominantly urban counties, Allegheny County ranks in the worst 13% of cancer risk from HAPs, and some neighborhoods have even greater exposures because they are in the shadow of polluting facilities5, compounding other health challenges rooted in racial injustice. Carcinogens released and formed during the process of fracking natural gas—such as benzene, formaldehyde, particulate matter, and radioactive compounds—threaten the wellbeing of residents in rural communities6. Studies in other states have shown that children living closer to oil and gas wells have higher rates of leukemia7. Drinking water in our region has been contaminated by radioactive and other hazardous materials8, and additional carcinogen exposures will come with the manufacturing of plastics and other products made possible by fracked gas. Many of these same contaminants are used and emitted during existing industrial manufacturing and transportation, affecting workers and nearby communities; they contribute not only to cancers but also to asthma, neurological disorders, heart disease and other health problems9. Consumer products are also a concern. Chemicals known to cause cancer are in cosmetics, furniture, building materials, and home and garden pest control products, despite availability of safer alternatives10. Hundreds of chemicals manufactured, used and released in our region come from fossil fuel feedstocks, so dependency on them contributes to the climate crisis.
These widespread exposures to environmental chemicals are critical priorities for cancer prevention. They are also economic opportunities given increasing demand for non-toxic products and a growth in sectors prioritizing clean and sustainable production11. Across the country, companies are designing, manufacturing and using products with safer chemicals12. Major retailers are requiring their suppliers to make products without carcinogens13. State and local governments are providing support to companies to reduce their use of toxic chemicals and are increasing demand for safer alternatives through their purchasing14. In places across the US, and in Southwestern Pennsylvania, diverse coalitions and communities are calling for a new economy in which people have safe secure jobs producing goods and services that optimize human health and for investment in communities disproportionately polluted and starved of economic opportunity15.
We believe our region can be a beacon for a transition away from hazardous chemicals and production systems that contribute to the twin crises of high cancer rates and elevated environmental exposures.
The technological and research capabilities of our universities and healthcare institutions; the investment capacity of our philanthropies; the unparalleled leadership of our non-profit sector and our community-based organizations; and champions in the public sector give us the potential to act at the scale needed. The task is big, and it is doable, starting with environmental exposures that are unacceptably high, strongly tied to specific cancers, disproportionately impacting marginalized people, and preventable.
With this Declaration, we come together to lift up a vision—of a region where clean environments generate health and well-being on their way to reversing cancer rates. We come together to commit to realizing this vision, recognizing that changing a system that is stuck requires concerted action across the system.
Each sector has an essential role to play in reversing the cancer and environmental crises in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The following are areas for action: guideposts for organizations in different sectors. Achieving them requires specific steps to be taken within each sector, as well as collaboration across sectors, as actions in one arena will make possible or reinforce actions elsewhere, and the absence of action in any one sector will impede success in others. We commit to taking such steps within and across sectors, lifting up and aligning activities already underway, working together on new activities, tracking progress, and transforming relationships in the process.
as of November 2023
412Thrive
Action Housing Inc.
Allegheny County Clean Air Now
Allegheny Health Network Pediatric Institute
American Sustainable Business Council
Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC)
The Black Urban Gardeners and Farmers of Pittsburgh Co-op
Breathe Project
Cancer Community Club
Cancer Recovery Group
Center for Coalfield Justice
Center for Healthy Environments and Communities, Pitt Public Health
Citizens for Radioactive Radon Reduction
Clean Air Council
Clearya
Climate Reality Project Pittsburgh & SWPA Chapter
Communities First Sewickley Valley
Concerned Health Professionals of Pennsylvania
CREATE Lab
Earthworks
evolveEA
FANS 4 HELP
The Forbes Funds
FracTracker Alliance
Green Building Alliance
The Green Media Group
Grounded Strategies
Group Against Smog and Pollution
The Heinz Endowments
Homewood Children’s Village
Lowell Center for Sustainable Production
Mid-Atlantic Regional Public Health Training Center (MAR-PHTC)
Mountain Watershed Association
Ohio Valley Environmental Resistance
Our Children Our Earth
PA American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists
PA Department of Health
PASUP
Pennsylvania Public Health Association
Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
Plant-Based Pittsburgh
Protect PT
Putting Down Roots
Rail Pollution Protection Pittsburgh (RP3)
Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh
ReImagine Beaver County
Resilient Seven
Seventh Generation
Silent Spring Institute
Sustainable Pittsburgh
SWPA Environmental Health Project
UrbanKind Institute
Women for a Healthy Environment
Young Adult Survivors United
INDIVIDUAL ENDORSEMENTS
(organizations for identification purposes only)
Diana Steck, RN
Joan Schiller, MD
Samantha Hernandez, MPH
Abdul Alobireed, University of Pittsburgh
Terrie Baumgardner, M.A.
Liv Bennett, Allegheny County Council District 13
Olivia Benson
Martha Black, Mom
Stephanie Ciranni
Veronica Coptis
Elizabeth Creps, LSW
Zelda Curtis
Dawnmarie DeFazio
Peter DeNardis, MBA, International Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation
Mark Dixon
Lois Drumheller, BS, RRT
Colleen Dwyer
Bill Field PhD, MS, University of Iowa, College of Public Health
Barbara Fuhrman, PhD, MS
Fran Harkins, GASP Board Member
Sara Innamorato, Representative, Pennsylvania House of Representatives, District 21
Janis Johnson, GASP Board Member
Jennie Johnson
Jennifer Kay
Margaret D Kooistra, RN
Anthony Kovatch, MD, Allegheny Health Network
Jill Kriesky, PhD
Margaret Kuzemchak
Kathy Lawson
Emily Low
Mary McIntyre, Mlls
Kelsey McNaul
Melanie Meade
Matthew Mehalik, PhD
Nancy Mimm, DNP, Harrisburg University
David Mintz
Tammy Murphy
Gail Murray, BA
Wendy Myers, Find Your Balance LLC
Jon Nadle
Jacquelyn Nixon
Mel Packer, AS
Dianne Peterson
Marina Posvar
Anita Prizio, JD/MBA, Allegheny County Council
Abby Resnick, GASP Board Member
Jeanine Revak
Jen Rosa
Kara Rubio
Lauren Samolovitch, YASU
Judith Sanders, PhD
Kathy Schultz
Stephanie Scoletti
Heaven Sensky
Dennis Smiddle
Debra Smit
Thomas Stebbins, PA-C
Summer-Solstice Thomas
Rachel Vinciguerra
Jennifer Wasco, DNP, RN
Patricia R. Wendell, BS Ed
Sally Wenzel, MD
Edward Wrenn, MD
Pratik Yarlagadda
Michael Yonas, DrPH
REFERENCES