Iowa State Representative Ken Croken (D-Davenport - representing the 97th District) is hosting a community forum this Thursday, April 2nd. The forum will cover Iowa’s rising cancer rates.
Earlier this month, cancer researchers at the University of Iowa School of Public Health gave a presentation of their preliminary findings. Rep. Croken asked some of the researchers to share the presentation with his constituents.
“Last year, the legislature spent a million dollars studying what the environmental causes of cancer might be. Well, with all due respect, I know what the environmental causes of cancer are. It's nitrates, it's PFAS. It's so many other issues that are widely acknowledged,” Rep. Croken said in an interview with WVIK on Friday, March 27th.
“[W]e had another report come out just in the past few days from the Iowa Environmental Council and the Harkin Institute, which addresses the same issue that I just raised. We know what our environmental exposures are. We need to stop counting the problem. We need to stop measuring the problem. We need to stop studying the problem. We need to do something about the problem.”
Rep. Croken is a member of the House Environmental Protection Committee. He says the committee has approved one bill that the House passed last month involving chemtrails.
“The belief that somebody, for some reason, somehow, is dropping some chemical on us for nefarious intent. I don't find any evidence of that,” Rep. Croken said. “There is no scientifically based study that tells me that's happening. And then, of all things, that bill then travels over to the Senate side, where it is dropped. So the Environmental Protection Committee of the House of Representatives accomplished nothing.”
Croken said he has introduced a variety of bills that the committee did not end up debating, including one to increase the cigarette tax by a $1.50 to deter people from smoking, citing lung cancer. Another bill would require private schools to test for radon, which was attached as an amendment to another bill but ruled not germane, so it was dropped.
He has also proposed banning PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” and asked the legislature to fund the Iowa Water Quality Information System. That system will run out of money this summer and shut down without additional funding.
“T[]here were I think simple proposals ditches that would be installed along waterways that would capture runoff to keep nitrates out of our drinking water. Forgive me, I'm ranting, but I get very frustrated when we don't do the simple things that we could do to minimize our exposure,” Rep. Croken said. “[I]t's personal. I lost my wife to breast cancer. And you could talk a very long time, but it would be very hard to convince me it wasn't an environmental [issue]. The woman had no other indications that she was vulnerable to breast cancer, and it took her too early from our family, and [we] will never be the same.”
The presentation will be led by Dr. Mary Charlton, Professor of Epidemiology at the UI School of Public Health. It will be held in the community room at the Scott Community College Urban Campus, 101 West Third Street, beginning at 6:30 p.m.
You can hear Rep. Croken discuss the recently signed HMO tax bill and the remaining assembly business, including bills targeting libraries in WVIK’s full interview below.
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