Scholar to discuss ‘Fracking as a Feminist Issue’ at Rice lecture

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Sandra Steingraber, scholar in residence at the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College, will speak on “Fracking is a Feminist Issue: How the Environmental Crisis Undermines Women’s Health and What We Can Do About It” Sept. 22. The lecture begins at 6 p.m. in Baker Hall’s Kelly International Conference Facility.

	SANDRA STEINGRABER

Steingraber will argue that economic dependency on fossil fuels — and the processes to extract those fuels, such as fracking — not only destabilizes the Earth’s climate, it creates human rights violations in the form of toxic trespass. Beginning with the premise that women’s bodies are the first environment, Steingraber will examine the threats of petrochemical exposures to human health.

Steingraber is an internationally recognized authority on the environmental links to cancer and human health. Her book “Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment” (Da Capo Press, 2010) presented cancer as a human rights issue. Originally published in 1997, it was the first to bring together data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries.

The free event is open to the public; it was organized by Rice’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality as part of the Gray/Wawro Lectures in Gender, Health and Well-Being.

For more information, contact riedelbs@rice.edu or visit http://cswgs.rice.edu.