Collaborative on Health and the Environment :: Chemicals: Our Champions, Our Killers

Log in - Help - May 16, 2012

PARTNERSHIP EVENTS

Partnership call: Advancing Risk Assessment: Progress and Ongoing Obstacles
Thur, May 24

Conference: Healthy Environments Across Generations
New York Academy of Medicine
June 7-8, 2012

4/26/12: MP3 recording available: CHE Cafe call: Designing Healthy Communities: a conversation with Richard Jackson, MD, MPH

4/17/12: MP3 recording available: Nanotechnology: A Science and Policy Update

3/12/12: MP3 recording available: Phthalates and Proposed REACH Regulations

2/14/12: MP3 recording available: Health Effects of Indoor Air Contaminants
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CHE Partners on why they value our work

CHE WORKING GROUP EVENTS

CHE Alaska call: Little Changes: A Discussion with Author Kristi Marsh on How to Avoid Chemicals in Food and Everyday Products:
May 30, 2012

CHE Fertility and Reproductive Health and CHE EMF working groups call: EMF and Reproductive Health Risks:
May 21, 2012

Cumulative Impacts Working Group Strategic Meeting:
May 22, 2012

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Chemicals: Our Champions, Our Killers - Dec 28, 2008

An environmental lawyer who fought toxic chemicals all his life has to depend on them in a fight for his life.
Al Meyerhoff
L.A. Times
Dec 28, 2008

I have leukemia. Those must be among the most frightening words in the English language. My particular form of the disease, called acute myeloid leukemia, was diagnosed a few weeks ago. Leukemia was once a death sentence. No more. Through a combination of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, it now is actually curable. Sometimes.

It's a surreal experience, one day having dinner with friends, the next in a hospital bed for Thanksgiving, hoping to stay among the living. But that's where I am writing this, while having some of the most toxic chemicals known to man pumped into my bloodstream. Voluntarily.

There is some irony to this. You see, I am an environmental lawyer, and I have spent much of the last 25 years doing battle with the chemical companies, including seeking to ban (sometimes successfully) various toxic chemicals, some strikingly similar to those I am now ingesting. Timing is everything.

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