TNL’s Editor-in-Chief Carey Gillam traveled to Iowa to hear directly from the people living through an ongoing water crisis. In conversations with residents, farmers, politicians and scientists, a troubling picture emerged: dangerously high levels of nitrates and pesticides are contaminating drinking water across the state. Many fear this pollution is fueling Iowa’s unusually high — and still rising — cancer rates.
Community members share personal stories of illness and frustration, while farmers and politicians struggle to navigate the tension between protecting a farm-driven economy and addressing growing concerns over water safety and public health.
See the full series: Cancer in the Corn Belt
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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.
