When I was reading the first chapter, "The War on Cancer" in the book, Protecting New Jersey's Environment From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State, I continuously found myself thinking about my own little community and about the cancer clusters he mentions. My mom always says that she thinks there is something in our water, or emissions from the cell tower on top of the hill by our house that is causing many of our neighbors to contract cancer. Though the cancers are different, which is contrary to what he said qualifies these cases as being a cancer cluster, I still think it is odd that there have been so many people on my little secluded street that have had cancer. Just on my street, which is a dead end, there have been 6 people who have had cancer over the past several years, out of about 25 houses. I think that's a lot! It was just so sad to hear how it is so hard to track down what the cause of these cancer clusters are, and even when they do find out what is causing it, such as a toxic waste dump company, they do not want to take ownership of it and fight hard to avoid taking any blame.
I also felt that his story about his little brother dying from leukemia was so sad, and moving. It really brought the chapter to life though, and explained why he is so passionate about finding out what is causing us to get sick. I never really realized that cancer was a big problem in the early 20th century. I guess I thought it had become more prominent in the past decade or two, but to hear about all those unfortunate cases in Jersey City, Rutherford, and Toms River was crazy. I felt so terrible for those poor children in the Pierrepont Elementary School - 90 of which I believe had cancer. That's just insane! To make it worse though, they could not come up with a good reason for why there were so many children getting sick all at the same time with the same type of cancer. I can't imagine how I would have felt as a parent, not having any answers and no one or nothing to blame. Unfortunately, these clusters have popped up other places as well, like Toms River. I just hope that if we don't find a cure for cancer we at least find a way to avoid it like not using chemicals in manufacturing of various things like plastic, and find more sustainable and non toxic solutions to at least lesson the possibility and causes of cancer in the future.
By Sabrina Sunflower