Pulitzer Prize-winning author highlights Purdue Cancer Culture and Community events

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dan Fagin, a nationally prominent journalist on environmental health topics, headlined Purdue University’s 2014 Cancer Culture & Community Colloquium with a talk in November.

Fagin, a science journalism professor at New York University, is the author of “Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation,” a book awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Combining investigative reporting and historical research, the book probes a New Jersey seashore town’s cluster of childhood cancers linked to water and air pollution.

“While this true story is grounded in the science of what environmental factors can lead to cancer and a cancer cluster, the incredible human toll this left for residents in Toms River provided the ideal combination for our Cancer Culture & Community program,” said Marietta Harrison, director of the Oncological Sciences Center, which is the Discovery Park research center leading CCC.

The Cancer Culture & Community Colloquium also included an exhibit of works by visual and performing arts students done in response to the “Toms River” book and a TEDxPurdue breakout session featuring members of Discovery Park’s Center for the Environment and a representative from the Wabash River Enhancement Group.

“The Toms River saga, so carefully and scientifically chronicled by Dan Fagin, provided an ideal window for the Purdue community into the lessons we can learn as a community about the importance and the challenges of understanding and regulating environmental health risks,” said Leigh Raymond, a Purdue political science professor and director of the Center for the Environment, which served as this year’s special CCC partner.

Other sponsors and partners included the Oncological Sciences Center; College of Liberal Arts; Department of English; Office of Public Affairs; Purdue Center for Cancer Research; Office of the Provost; Discovery Lecture Series; Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts; TEDxPurdueU; Humanities, Social Sciences and Education Library; Hicks Undergraduate Library; and the West Lafayette Public Library.