Book excerpt: A New War on Cancer

A local chapter of the Clean Air Council held a community meeting and shared that Clairton had high rates of both cancer and asthma, which they said were linked to the plant’s emissions. Among the 612 other US counties in the study, lung cancer rates would have declined an average of 62% if smoking hadn’t been part of the picture over the last twenty years, indicating that environmental exposures play a substantial role in the region’s lung cancer rates. Advocating for clean air in Clairton felt like her purpose—a continuation of her dad’s dedication to the community. Meade and other community members rallying for clean air in June 2019 after a U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works fire. Two years later, in 2015, her older sister Tammy died at age fifty-five from lung cancer.