cancer
Newsletter
Credit: Ehud Neuhaus/Unsplash
Mikisew Cree chief links cancer concerns to oilsands pollution in meeting with Carney
The chief of a Cree First Nation downstream from Alberta’s oilsands told Prime Minister Mark Carney he will not support new fast-tracked fossil fuel projects until Ottawa addresses toxic water and elevated cancer rates in his community.
In short:
- Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro of Mikisew Cree First Nation said residents face months-long delays for cancer treatment and suspects local pollution worsens illnesses.
- The community sits north of oilsands tailings ponds shown to leak into groundwater; a 2014 report linked higher cancer rates to employment in the oilsands and consumption of local fish and game.
- Tuccaro criticized the federal Building Canada Act, which fast-tracks “national interest” projects without guaranteeing Indigenous consent, and invited Carney to visit Fort Chipewyan.
Key quote:
“You want my consent? You improve my people’s health.”
— Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro, Mikisew Cree First Nation
Why this matters:
Communities downstream from the Alberta oilsands live amid vast tailings ponds that store toxic byproducts of oil extraction. Peer-reviewed studies have documented leaks into groundwater, raising fears about cancer clusters and contamination of traditional food sources like fish and game. Health access is also limited: Residents often travel long distances for care, meaning diagnoses come late and outcomes worsen. As Canada pushes carbon-capture projects to frame oilsands oil as “decarbonized,” local First Nations warn that air and water pollution remain even if emissions drop. Their stance highlights a broader debate over what counts as clean energy — and whether fast-tracked projects can proceed without fully addressing Indigenous health and environmental risks.
Related: Canada funds long-awaited health study for Indigenous communities downstream of oilsands
Keep reading...Show less
credit: Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash
Nuclear energy’s clean image leaves out the radioactive baggage
Nuclear energy is making a global comeback as a supposed climate fix, but Indigenous communities say its toxic past and present make it far from clean.
In short:
- Thirty-one countries, including the U.S., have pledged to triple nuclear energy by 2050, touting it as a zero-emissions alternative to fossil fuels amid rising electricity demands from AI and tech industries.
- Critics argue the “clean” label ignores uranium’s dirty journey — from mines on Indigenous lands to radioactive waste that lasts tens of thousands of years — leaving cancer clusters and poisoned water in its wake.
- Activists like Jesse Deer In Water and Leona Morgan, who’ve lived near nuclear sites, are calling for reparations, ethical oversight, and Indigenous representation in nuclear energy decisions.
Key quote:
“All along this journey of uranium for nuclear power and for nuclear bombs, they leave behind these poisoned communities. The moral debt that the United States owes to Indigenous people is ridiculous. It’ll probably never be met.”
— Jesse Deer In Water, Indigenous anti-nuclear activist
Why this matters:
Nuclear power is strutting back onto the global stage, dressed in a green halo and marketed as the solution to our overheating planet. Activists like Jesse Deer In Water and Leona Morgan aren’t buying the green rebrand. They’ve seen how nuclear waste lingers for generations and how policy decisions are made without including those most affected. If we’re going to call nuclear power clean, they argue, we’d better reckon with its full cost — and start listening to the communities who’ve been carrying that radioactive baggage all along.
Read more:
Keep reading...Show less
Credit: Kaz Tanaka/BigStock Photo ID: 2398044
How a government feud threatens decades of scientific progress
The Trump administration’s move to cut off $2.6 billion in federal research funding to Harvard has upended a vital engine of American science, with ripple effects that reach far beyond a single university.
Emily Badger, Aatish Bhatia, and Ethan Singer report for The New York Times.
In short:
- Nearly 900 grants supporting projects in neuroscience, opioid treatment, environmental health, and more were halted after the administration accused Harvard of failing to meet federal conditions tied to civil rights and research integrity.
- The funding freeze impacts long-term, high-risk science — including regenerative medicine, sleep studies, and cancer research — that typically isn’t pursued by industry due to cost or lack of near-term profit.
- These grants also train the next generation of scientists, sustain critical partnerships across institutions, and support research that underpins national policy, from trans fat bans to telehealth effectiveness.
Key quote:
“What we are losing is a future.”
— Glorian Sorensen, professor and co-director of a worker health and safety center at Harvard
Why this matters:
Shutting down nearly 900 research grants puts real-world public health, environmental policy, and future breakthroughs at risk. The consequences might not be seen today, but years from now, the impacts will be felt — in the therapies the world doesn't have, the gaps in climate data, the lives that could have been saved but weren't.Read more: An open letter from EPA staff to the American public
Keep reading...Show less
Credit: zimmytws/BogStock Photo ID: 299386018
Tulane faces backlash for silencing researcher exposing pollution and racial bias
A Tulane University scientist has resigned, alleging she was muzzled for exposing how Louisiana’s petrochemical industry harms Black communities through pollution and discriminatory hiring.
In short:
- Dr. Kimberly Terrell resigned from Tulane’s Environmental Law Clinic, claiming the university censored her advocacy and barred her from discussing her studies linking toxic pollution to racial health disparities.
- Internal emails show university officials feared her work would jeopardize political and donor support for a high-profile redevelopment project tied to New Orleans’ historic Charity Hospital.
- Terrell’s research revealed higher cancer rates, premature births, and unequal employment in Black communities near petrochemical facilities, sparking pushback from elected officials and donors.
Key quote:
“I cannot remain silent as this university sacrifices academic integrity for political appeasement and pet projects. Our work is too important, and the stakes are too high, to sit back and watch special interests replace scholarship with censorship.”
— Kimberly Terrell, former director of community engagement, Tulane Environmental Law Clinic
Why this matters:
Here's a story that cuts right to the bone of environmental justice in the South, where petrochemical plants line the Mississippi River with polluting smoke stacks and nearby communities have long been treated as sacrifice zones. It's another blow to environmental justice and academic freedom in the face of corporate and political influence.
Read more:
- “Cancer Alley” residents exposed to more than the lifetime exposure limit for cancer-causing compound: Report
- Op-ed: “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you” — disabling environments in Cancer Alley and the Ohio River Valley
- Community activists plead to be heard through “closed doors” outside nation’s top energy conference
- Lives “devastated’ by petrochemical industry pollution in Texas: Report
- Op-ed: Why is the chemical industry pitting public health against economic growth?
Keep reading...Show less
Credit: Louis Reed/Unsplash
Congress questions who’s in control as Trump budget cuts disrupt NIH research
A Senate panel pressed the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jay Bhattacharya, to explain who is behind sweeping cuts to research funding, as confusion grows over the Trump administration’s influence on the agency’s operations.
In short:
- NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya deflected responsibility for the agency’s funding freeze and an $18 billion budget cut, blaming broader collaboration between Congress and the Trump administration.
- Senators from both parties criticized the cuts, warning they would stall progress on diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and risk U.S. competitiveness in medical science.
- Internal dissent has grown within the NIH, with over a hundred employees signing a letter alleging the grant cancellations were ideologically driven and bypassed scientific input.
Key quote:
“There’s a range of decisions, I think, that led to some of those pauses of grants.”
— Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health
Why this matters:
The National Institutes of Health has long been a global leader in funding biomedical research, underwriting much of the basic science that drives breakthroughs in medicine. Cuts of the magnitude now proposed — nearly 40% — threaten not just lab jobs and university projects, but the foundation of U.S. innovation in health. When politics overtake peer-reviewed science, fields like public health, climate-linked disease research, and reproductive health often take the first hit. The sidelining of diversity and equity studies under the label of “politicized science” could further erode efforts to understand and address health disparities. As federal support evaporates, researchers may turn to private industry, where the incentive to cure may compete with the incentive to profit. And for the public, it means longer waits for accurate, objective answers about diseases that affect millions.
Read more: NIH workers warn of illegal orders and suppressed science
Keep reading...Show less
Newsletter
Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash
Colorado kids with leukemia are more than twice as likely to live near dense oil and gas development
A recent study suggests that living near a higher density of oil and gas wells increases childhood cancer risk.
A recent study found that Colorado children who’d been diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia were more than twice as likely to live near dense oil and gas development, including both conventional and fracking wells, than healthy children throughout the state.
Oil and gas wells emit chemicals that have been linked to increased risk for this type of leukemia — the most common form of childhood cancer — including benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, among others.
Previous research in Colorado and Pennsylvania, which are among the top 10 energy-producing states in the country, have also linked living near oil and gas wells with higher risk for childhood leukemia, but this is the first to assess whether the density of wells and the volume of oil and gas being produced leads to greater risk.
The new study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, looked at medical records for more than 3,000 children born in Colorado between 1992 and 2019. The researchers found that children who were diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of two and nine were more than twice as likely to live within five kilometers — about three miles — of dense oil and gas development compared to healthy children. The study also found that Children who’d been diagnosed with leukemia during this time period were between 1.4 and 2.64 times more likely to live within 13 kilometers (about eight miles) of dense oil and gas development.
“Considering the density of oil and gas development is really important,” Lisa McKenzie, lead author of the study and associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health, told EHN. “If you were in the unusual situation of having just one oil and gas well within a kilometer of your home, that might not have increased your child’s risk for leukemia. However, we found that if you had lots and lots of wells within 13 kilometers [about eight miles] of your home, that did increase the risk for childhood leukemia.”
The study included 451 children with leukemia and 2,706 healthy children, and considered the density of oil and gas development near their homes starting at the time their mothers conceived them through the time of their diagnosis (or a similar time frame for healthy children). The researchers assessed the density of oil and gas production by looking at the number of wells present, how close they were to a child’s home, the number of new wells being drilled, and how much oil and gas was being produced at various times within three, five, and 13 kilometers of their homes.
“Children living near the densest areas of oil and gas development had the highest risk increase,” McKenzie said, “but we also found that children with leukemia were much more likely to be living within three or five kilometers of any oil and gas wells than children without leukemia.”
The researchers controlled for other childhood cancer risk factors including other sources of pollution around the home, UV exposure, distance to the nearest highway, the mothers’ ages, and the child’s biological sex and birth weight.
“This study has numerous strengths,” Cassandra Clark, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota's Division of Pediatric Epidemiology and Clinical Research, told EHN. Clark, who was not involved in the study but co-authored a 2022 paper on childhood cancer risk and fracking in Pennsylvania that made similar findings, said this study’s strengths include using a larger sample size than previous research, controlling for other childhood cancer risks, and focusing on the age range where childhood leukemia incidence is highest.
“We have now seen three high-quality case-control studies documenting increased pediatric leukemia risk associated with proximity to oil and gas development, and the effects observed are relatively consistent across studies,” Clark said, adding that there’s now enough research on this for policymakers to “develop health-protective policies for oil and gas development.”
In 2020, Colorado legislators increased the state’s setback distances — the minimum distance between new fracking wells and homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses — from 500 feet from homes and 1,000 feet for high-occupancy buildings like schools, to 2,000 feet (a little more than half a kilometer) from all schools and homes. Those distances are among the most health-protective in the country.
In Pennsylvania, for example, the setback distance is 500 feet (about 0.15 kilometers) for any occupied building, but this can be waived by property owners, and some facilities operate within 300 feet of residential buildings. Public health experts have warned that these distances are not great enough to protect public health, but efforts to expand setback distances in the state have repeatedly been shot down by Pennsylvania lawmakers.
“Our research suggests that just increasing setback distances isn’t enough,” McKenzie said. “Current setback laws only consider where one new well is going. I would really encourage policymakers to consider the cumulative impacts of everything going on around homes or in areas where new oil and gas development is going to protect vulnerable populations like young children.”
Keep reading...Show less
Newsletter
Credit: mostafa meraji/Pixabay
Rising temperatures linked to growing cancer death rates among women in Middle East and North Africa
As extreme heat intensified across the Middle East and North Africa between 1998 and 2019, cancer mortality among women steadily climbed, according to new research.
In short:
- A study in Frontiers in Public Health analyzed cancer data in 17 Middle Eastern and North African countries and found higher temperatures were linked to increased cases and deaths from breast, ovarian, uterine, and cervical cancers.
- For each 1°C temperature rise, cancer cases increased from 173 to 280 per 100,000 women and deaths rose from 171 to 332 per 100,000, with ovarian cancer showing the steepest rise.
- Researchers attribute the trend to increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, worsening air pollution during heatwaves, and barriers women face in accessing cancer screening and treatment in the region.
Key quote:
“Women in this region face cultural, legal, and economic barriers to screening and treatment while also being disproportionately exposed to environmental carcinogens.”
— Wafa Abuelkheir Mataria, senior research fellow at the American University in Cairo
Why this matters:
In regions where heat is escalating, so are exposures to pollutants and UV radiation that can trigger or worsen cancer. For women in the Middle East and North Africa, who often lack access to regular screening or cancer treatment, the burden becomes heavier. Heat worsens air quality by spurring chemical reactions that boost pollutants like ozone and fine particulate matter, both known carcinogens. It also stresses healthcare systems already strained by conflict, poverty, or underfunding. When higher temperatures correlate with higher cancer mortality, it forces a deeper look into how rising global temperatures intersect with inequality — particularly in how climate risks affect women’s bodies differently. This trend may signal similar risks for other regions experiencing rapid warming, raising questions about preparedness and equity in public health systems under pressure from climate change.
Learn more: New research finds humans may overheat faster than we thought as the planet warms
Keep reading...Show less
ORIGINAL REPORTING
MOST POPULAR
CLIMATE
