Leading Health Expert and Best-Selling Author Devra Davis to Lecture on Link Between Pollution and Human Disease

WORCESTER, Mass. – Devra Davis, leading public health expert and best-selling author of When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, will give a free, public lecture at the College of the Holy Cross on Wednesday, Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center Ballroom. Following her talk, Davis will sign copies of her award-winning book, which examines the link between environmental toxins and chronic diseases and reveals how corporations have hidden pollution-induced epidemics from the public in their efforts to turn a profit. For more information please contact Professor Catherine A. Roberts at 508-793-2456.

A national leader in the field of epidemiology, Davis reports that 10 times more people die each year from avoidable environmental contamination than perished in the Sept. 11 attacks. Personally affected when several of her family members died from pollution-induced heart problems, Davis set out to reveal the environmental causes of a number of serious health problems facing people today. Described by Library Journal as "an expose on how industrial polluters deceived the public, belittled scientists and academics, and pressured government agencies to stifle regulations," When Smoke Ran Like Water, a National Book Award finalist, addresses everything from breast cancer and male sterility, to birth defects and asthma.

Davis is professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. She also serves as Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School, Honorary Professor at London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Expert Advisor to the World Health Organization. Appointed to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board by President Clinton in 1994, she has worked as senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Founder of the International Breast Cancer Prevention Collaborative Research Group — an organization dedicated to exploring potential causes of breast cancer — she serves as scientific advisor to the Women's Environment and Development Organization, and as a visiting professor at Rockefeller University's Strang Cornell Cancer Prevention Center.

Her research on the connections between environmental hazards and human health has been widely acknowledged by health and women's organizations. In 1998, she was recognized as an "innovator on the environment" by the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for Invention and Innovation. A recipient of the Woman of Distinction Award from the Conservative Judaism's Women's League and the Breast Cancer Award from the American Cancer Society, she has also been recognized by the National Cancer Institute, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Noreen T. Holland Foundation, for "leadership in advancing the understanding of potential environmental causes of breast cancer."

Davis' lecture is the inaugural event of the new Environmental Studies Concentration, a multidisciplinary program of study that encourages students to examine the causes, mechanisms and effects of environmental problems by investigating the relevant natural processes and the interplay between the environment and social, political and economic institutions.