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    Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy
    Unavailable
    Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy
    Unavailable
    Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy
    Ebook224 pages2 hours

    Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy

    By Nancy A. Nichols

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook



    On her deathbed, Sue asked her sister for one thing: to write about the connection between the industrial pollution in their hometown and the rare cancer that was killing her. Fulfilling that promise has been Nancy Nichols’ mission for more than a decade.

    Lake Effect is the story of her investigation. It reaches back to their childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, an industrial town on Lake Michigan once known for good factory jobs and great fishing. Now Waukegan is famous for its Superfund sites: as one residput it, asbestos to the north, PCBs to the south.

    Drawing on her experience as a journalist, Nichols interviewed dozens of scientists, doctors, and environmentalists to determine if these pollutants could have played a role in her sister’s death. While researching Sue’s cancer, she discovered her own: a vicious though treatable form of pancreatic cancer. Doctors and even family urged her to forget causes and concentrate on cures, but Nichols
    knew that it was relentless questioning that had led to her diagnosis. And that it is questioning—by governmas well as individuals—that could save other lives.

    Lake Effect challenges us to ask why. It is the fulfillmof a sister’s promise. And it is a call to stop the pollution that is endangering the health of all our families.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIsland Press
    Release dateMar 18, 2010
    ISBN9781597265232
    Unavailable
    Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy
    Author

    Nancy A. Nichols

    Nancy A. Nichols is the author of Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town’s Toxic Legacy.  She is a journalist, editor, and former broadcaster whose writing has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times Book Review, The Harvard Business Review, The Nation and more. 

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    Reviews for Lake Effect

    4.5/5

    6 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Nancy Nichols grew up in Waugekan, IL in the 1960s and 1970s, when several factories, including Johns-Manville (asbestos) and Outboard Marine (engine manufacturing, which involved metalworking fluids that included PCBs) were dumping waste directly into Waukegan Harbor. Waukegan is also home to the Yeoman Creek Landfill, which abutted a local farm where her family purchased vegetables. Nancy's sister Sue died of ovarian cancer and Nancy herself is a survivor of pancreatic cancer. This book, a combination of environmental history, epidemiology, and memoir, tells the story of Waukegan's industrial rise and fall and Nancy's search for answers following her sister's death and her own battle with cancer. It's compulsively readable and makes a compelling case for the linkage between her cancer and Waukegan's pollution.
    • 4/5
      Lake Effect by Nancy Nichols was an intersting look at how the environment plays a role in our health. Nichols and her sister grew up on Lake Waukegan where there were numerous factories. While she found her childhood to be idyllic, unbeknownst to her, the factories were releasing harmful toxins into the environment. Nichols has done her research. When she develops a rare cancer (not the same cancer as her sister's rare cancer), she begins to research her hometown and question the environment she grew up in. This is not a cheery book, but it is one that is quite informative and has caused me to think.