Oak Cliff Breast Cancer Rates : Tx Times Two!

Have you been hearing a lot about breast cancer this past year? I have three Dallas friends walking or running in various events to raise research funds, and be-ribboned "pink things" are for sale everywhere. But, my favorite way to support research is donating at the grocery store on my credit card-totally convenient! I'm posting now because I read today that Oak Cliff breast cancer rates are twice as high as the state average. That's a huge deal that we must deal with as a community, city, and state-and awareness is just the beginning.
We ask why so much cancer, and the answers from health experts are forthcoming: poverty, diet, lack of screening and other situations related to poverty like lack of insurance and transportation. One causative factor not in the report I read: THE ENVIRONMENT!
The old lead smelter at I 30 and Hampton, the OC dry cleaners that became a Superfund site, the polluted Trinity River, Mountain Creek Lake and its toxic surroundings (remember Cesium 137), the TCE-filled aquifer at the weapons facility on Jefferson, the cement plants south of Dallas, mercury and CO2 from a power plant off Loop 12, the bio-hazardous landfill that flooded - washing its free-floating hazards all the way to the Trinity! And those are the sites and situations we know about.
When you read my blog about a local TCE plume amd radionuclides in our lake, keep these cancer stats in mind. Environmental clean up is the most direct and powerful thing we can immediately do to impact health; but those charged with paying for clean up will do unbelievable things to avoid it. Unsavory people play with numbers until they can re-figure research conclusions; they reset standard levels of safety evaluation, minimize risk, deny responsibility, blame others...You get the picture. I have been totally amazed at how difficult it is to get corporations and the military-our own government - to do the obvious right thing in environmental clean up.
You know, cancer is supremely difficult and sad as it is. Distrust of those who have the power to protect us makes the reality of illness so much worse. (Then, there's the anger...but that's another therapy session.)

*This is the ninth anniversary of my mother's death from leukemia. I'm so glad to be able to remember her by asking folks to support cancer research. Let's include St. Jude's and MD Anderson in our holiday, charitable giving. Everyone who can should buy and send these centers' unique Christmas cards, which exquisitely carry the message of hope. Whatever sadness we experience in life, we must never despair - for God will carry us gently, safely o'er to the shore of the next stage in life-no matter what harm people or nature may do. I know from experience.