MUNCIE, Ind. -- A biologist, poet and cancer survivor discusses links between cancer and the environment March 4 at Ball State University.

Sandra Steingraber presents "Living Downstream" at 7:30 p.m. in the L.A. Pittenger Student Center Ballroom. The presentation is based on her book "Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment." Steingraber overlays scrupulously researched scientific analysis with narrative of her own battle against cancer. She traces her cancer to high concentrations of environmental toxins in her native rural Illinois.

Bringing together data on toxic releases and newly released data from U.S. cancer registries, "Living Downstream" examines worldwide patterns of cancer and the sabotage performed by cancer-promoting substances on human cells. Also included is investigation of rural Illinois, Boston and Long Island, where cancer rates have steadily risen since mid-century.

Steingraber is also author of "Post-Diagnosis," a volume of poetry, and co-author of "The Spoils of Famine," a book on ecology and human rights in Africa.

In 1997, Steingraber was named one of Ms. Magazine’s Women of the Year and in 1998 she received the Jenifer Altman Foundation Award "for the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer."