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Hundreds of Iowans gathered at Drake University in early August to confront a growing water quality crisis linked to the state’s powerful agricultural industry. Community leaders, scientists and farmers warned of dangerously high levels of nitrates, pesticides and livestock waste contaminating the state’s drinking water — pollution they fear is driving staggeringly high, and rising, cancer rates.
Critics accuse state leaders of prioritizing farming interests over protection of public health. Community members share personal stories of illness, frustration and a mounting demand for stronger regulations and clean, safe water.
Read more:
Outrage in Iowa – Residents demand action to clean up dangerously polluted water
“It doesn’t have to be this way” – Scientists confirm Iowa farm pollution is creating dire health risks
Seeking answers to a cancer crisis in Iowa, researchers question if agriculture is to blame
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Carey Gillam is the editor-in-chief of The New Lede and a veteran investigative journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering US news, including 17 years as a senior correspondent with Reuters international news service (1998-2015). She is the author of “Whitewash - The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science,” an expose of Monsanto’s corporate corruption of agriculture. The book won the coveted Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists in 2018. Her second book, a narrative legal thriller titled The Monsanto Papers, was released March 2, 2021.
She also has contributed chapters for a text book about environmental journalism and a book about pesticide use in Africa.
Gillam testified as an invited expert before the European Parliament in 2017 about her research, and was a featured speaker at the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, France in 2019. She also has been a keynote and/or panel speaker at events and universities throughout North America, Australia, The Netherlands, Brussels, and France.
Gillam writes regularly for The Guardian. Her work has additionally been published in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Time, and other outlets.
In 2022, Gillam helped launch The New Lede as a journalism initiative of the Environmental Working Group.
Gillam is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
