SAFE — Scientists, Activists, and Families for Cancer-Free Environments — is holding a protest at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, beginning at 9 a.m. at Freedom Plaza.
Their new mission statement reads: “In 2010, under then-President Barack Obama, the President’s Cancer Panel (PCP) declared that environmentally caused cancers were ‘grossly underestimated’ and that these cancers ‘needlessly devastate American lives.’ Despite the alarming conclusions, little, if anything, has changed and business has continued as usual. Not only has business continued, but according to U.S. SEER [Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program] data from the National Cancer Institute, the rates of several cancers, including children’s cancers, have been continuing to increase for decades. We keep the statistics, the PCP has sounded the alarm, and yet no concrete steps have been taken and in fact, new risks continue to emerge.
“We are grass-root organizations/coalitions of communities that feel that we have been failed by our environmental and public health agencies. Our communities have lost lives and livelihoods due to failures by these agencies. These failures allowed exposures to occur and to continue to occur, they allowed the dangerous use and disposal of chemicals to continue unchecked and uncontrolled, they allowed industry-backed science to all-too-often control the narrative on risk, health endpoints, remediation, and the safe use and disposal of chemicals at the expense of public health. While the public health agencies generally observe from a distance, often interacting most often with industry and their paid scientists, lawyers, and lobbyists, our communities bear the real costs of these failures. And we are here to tell you, these costs are real.”
SUSAN WIND, susan@
Wind is the lead organizer for the new grassroots group SAFE. See recent IPA news release: “Activist Moms Confront EPA’s ‘Criminally Negligent’ on Sept. 20.”
BRENDA HAMPTON, brendahampton8455@
Hampton is the subject of the documentary film “The Angel of Alabama” and was quoted in the recent IPA news release “‘Forever Chemicals’ and McDonald’s Wrappers: Confronting the EPA.”
AMANDA L. FEINDT, amandafeindt@gmail.com
Feindt is a major in the U.S. Army who was interviewed earlier this year on CNN and was featured on the IPA news release “Military Victims of the Red Hill Water Crisis to Join Others at EPA Protests.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, David Zupan,
September 19, 2022