When I started working on this piece, I thought the story might be about which pesticides cause cancers. I thought that perhaps at least one the two new reports that recently came out on cancer (listed below) in Iowa and its environmental causes would help clarify. What is the cause of our rising cancer rates and how can we eliminate it from our lives?
But as I read the Iowa Environmental Council’s report "Environmental Risk Factors and Iowa's Cancer Crisis" I almost immediately saw the take away: there is no ONE factor. We are surrounded by chemicals, interacting in ways we don’t really understand.
Which made me wonder—how do we determine which chemicals become legal, and is a legal pesticide (a term that includes rodenticides, insecticides, and herbicides) then a “safe” chemical?
And so…I went down the rabbit hole to understand the system we have to bring products to market in the U.S. and how it might be improved. My podcast this week then for the Iowa Food System Coalition is about just that. I hope you take the journey with me to understand how the system currently works and what we can do to make our communities better.
In addition to all I learned while creating this episode, another a wonderful thing happened while working on this story. No, it sadly wasn’t yet a massive sea change in public attitude (that will happen any day, I am sure!).
The wonderful surprise was that the Weary Ramblers took the time to write and record a song about what we can do to lower our risk of contamination by pesticides. It is at end of the episode—give it a listen.
Lastly—can you do me a favor? Can you “like” the episode if you do (where ever you listen to podcasts) and share it with a friend or two?
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