All the tasks of parenting kind of fall into two categories, which is: to protect our children from harm, and to plan for their future. And the environmental crisis is undermining both of those things. And in fact, preventing them.

Sandra Steingraber writes about environmental links to cancer and human health. Her books include Living Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment, and Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood. She has keynoted at conferences on human health and the environment, and lectures at universities, medical schools, and hospitals. In 1997,  Ms. magazine named her "Woman of the Year."

Steingraber has testified in the European Parliament, before the President's Cancer Panel, and has participated in briefings to Congress. A former Cornell University biology professor, she is now a scholar-in-residence at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York.