Toms River: How a Small Town Fought Back Against Corporate Giants for Toxic Dumping Linked to Cancer
HAVANA TIMES – Environmental reporter Dan Fagin joins us to discuss his book, “Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation,” which has just won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Fagin tells the story of how a small New Jersey town fought back against industrial pollution and astronomical rates of childhood cancer, and ultimately won one of the largest legal settlements in U.S. history.
“We don’t look for patterns, we don’t analyze those patterns. That is a terrible tragedy,” Fagin says of the failure to examine environmental and industrial data gathered by local, state and federal agencies. “People are dying because we do not do effective public health surveillance in this country.”