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Front entrance of the abandoned Florida Solite plant.

The Machine in the Garden

After decades of unchecked hazardous waste pollution, a Florida hamlet fights the developers eager to build homes there anyway.
by Jordan Blumetti via Oxford American on March 18, 2025
The cover of an edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine depicting a woman leaning on a chair and reading in front of a bookshelf and a pile of books.

How Midcentury Women’s Magazines Fought Cancer

Journalists at Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and other women’s magazines were informing readers how to recognize, protect against, and talk about cancer.
by Meg Heckman via The Saturday Evening Post on February 5, 2025
A 1938 poster from the Women’s Field Army of the American Society for the Control of Cancer.

Should We Abandon the Idea That Cancer Is Something To ‘Fight’?

Is the century-old battle metaphor doing more harm than good to doctors and patients alike?
by Elaine Schattner via Aeon on May 9, 2023
Poster encouraging cancer patients to seek information from various government agencies, showing a woman holding a caduceus.

After the War on Cancer

Raising awareness helped turn cancer from a stigmatized disease into a treatable one. But it hasn’t made affording that treatment any easier.
by Libby Watson via The Baffler on March 23, 2023
This image made available by the National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research in 2015 shows human colon cancer cells with the nuclei stained red.
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Richard Nixon’s War On Cancer Has Lessons For Biden’s New Push Against The Disease

Fifty years later, the legacy of the National Cancer Act illustrates the need for a broad approach.
by Eugene Rusyn, Abbe R. Gluck via Made By History on December 21, 2021
A protestor of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.

The Grieving Landscape

Upon discovering that her mother had been a member of the group Women Strike For Peace (WSP), Heidi Hutner becomes obsessed with feminist nuclear history.
by Heidi Hutner via Longreads on June 30, 2020

Cancer and Captivity: Reflections on Affliction in Puritan and Modern Times

It seemed to me that the conditions of cancer and captivity shared physical, emotional, and spiritual correspondences.
by Zabelle Stodola via Commonplace on November 21, 2017

Metaphors and Malignancy in Senator McCain’s Cancer Diagnosis

How does one talk about cancer, something so unpleasant that is almost always linked with death, and where do metaphors come in?
by Agnes Arnold-Forster via Nursing Clio on July 31, 2017
Photo of 5 skeletons controlling panels.

Notes from the Cold War Underground

The weapons infrastructure of the Cold War is now getting rented out on Airbnb or memorialized as patriotic kitsch.
by Emily Harnett via The Baffler on October 22, 2024
John Wayne plays Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror" (1956)

The John Wayne Flop Linked to High Cancer Rates

"The Conqueror" was filmed downwind of a nuclear test site. A new documentary tells the story of the fatal film set, and the community affected.
by Zach Budryk via The Hill on June 30, 2024
Tourists at the Trinity site in New Mexico.

Trinity Fallout

The U.S. government’s failure to recognize nuclear Downwinders in New Mexico is part of a broader failure to reckon with the legacies of the Manhattan Project.
by Nora Wendl via Places Journal on June 18, 2024
Plastic kitchen containers in red liquid.

How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals

The company found its own toxic compounds in human blood—and kept selling them.
by Sharon Lerner via The New Yorker on May 20, 2024
Uncle Sam sleeping on the job, avoiding looking at x-rays of damaged lungs.

Asbestos Is Finally Banned in the U.S. Here’s Why It Took So Long.

The carcinogenic effects of asbestos have been known for decades. We should have banned it long ago.
by Naomi Oreskes via Scientific American on May 14, 2024
Lagoon in Majuro Atoll with tropical trees in the background and a rainbow in the sky

On the Map

The flag of Bikini Atoll looks a lot like the American flag. It has the same red and white stripes. The resemblance is intentional.
by Carleigh Beriont via Process: A Blog for American History on December 12, 2023
Scientists releasing weather balloons
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Healing the Ozone: First Steps Toward Success

A worldwide effort to heal damage to the ozone layer is showing early progress.
via Retro Report on September 12, 2023
Glass of wine spilling.

The Great Alcohol Health Flip-Flop Isn’t That Hard to Understand—If You Know Who Was Behind It

More than 30 years ago, the "French paradox" got America bleary-eyed.
by Tim Requarth via Slate on April 23, 2023
A sign that reads "U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Test Site, Yucca Mountain Project."

The Fallout

The fight over nuclear waste on Yucca Mountain.
by Andrew Alam-Nist via The Politic on March 30, 2023
Postcard of Wood Island Park.

How Logan Airport Almost Destroyed East Boston

The echoes of an airport expansion, completed half a century ago, continue to harm Bostonians' health and well-being today.
by Jeremy Siegel via WGBH on December 13, 2022
People watching uranium mill waste blow in the wind.

The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater

A catalog of cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed for nuclear weapons, where polluted water and sickness were often left behind.
by Mark Olalde, Mollie Simon, Alex Mierjeski via ProPublica on December 3, 2022
A woman spraying DDT aerosol on her windows to keep insects at bay, 1955.

DDT Is Still With Us, 50 Years Since It Was Banned

Scientists have found toxic levels of the chemical at large. And some groups are making the case to produce even more.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on May 31, 2022
Memorial to cancer patients of the Radiation Effects Study, 1960-1972

Radiation, Race, and Recognition

Accountability is crucial as we remember the individuals and communities harmed by our institutions and call for retroactive justice.
by Divya Kumar via Nursing Clio on May 26, 2022
Photograph of John Gunther, an American journalist.

The Book That Unleashed American Grief

John Gunther’s “Death Be Not Proud” defied a nation’s reluctance to describe personal loss.
by Deborah Cohen via The Atlantic on March 8, 2022
Geneticist Hermann Muller and his electronic equipment.

The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer

How a feisty, suicidal Nobel laureate infuriated both Hitler and Stalin, and stalled cancer research for fifty years along the way.
by Sam Kean via The Disappearing Spoon on November 23, 2021
An artistic syringe with RNA sequence in it

The Tangled History of mRNA Vaccines

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.
by Elie Dolgin via Nature on September 14, 2021
High Schoolers in Arkansas painting a nuclear test

The Long Road to Nuclear Justice for the Marshallese People

U.S. nuclear weapons testing displaced residents of the Marshall Islands. They're still fighting for justice for the devastation of their homeland and health.
by Olivia Paschal via Facing South on April 2, 2021
Doctor in white coat giving thumbs up

Presidential Physicians Don’t Always Tell the Public the Full Story

They are beholden only to their patient, not to the American people.
by Matthew Algeo via The Atlantic on October 3, 2020
Person getting a vaccination.
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A Coronavirus Vaccine Can’t Come at the Expense of Fighting the Virus Now

Government investment into a cancer vaccine had drawbacks.
by Robin Wolfe Scheffler via Made By History on July 24, 2020

Dystopian Bodies

In her newest book, Barbara Ehrenreich attacks the "epidemic" of wellness.
by Niko Maragos via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 7, 2018

The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson

She did not write her most famous work until late in life. Until then, she thought of herself as a poet of the sea.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 19, 2018
The President Is a Sick Man by Matthew Algeo, book cover

A Yacht, A Mustache: How A President Hid His Tumor

Grover Cleveland believed that if anything happened to his mustache during his surgery at sea, the public would know something was wrong.
by Matthew Algeo via NPR on July 6, 2011
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