Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈

@ssteingraber1.bsky.social

23K followers 2.6K following 3.5K posts

PhD biologist, author, climate activist, adoptee rights activist. Senior Scientist and Writer in Residence, Science and Environmental Health Network, Rachel Carson scholar with Library of America. Reminder: Nobody’s coming.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · Nov 9

A little thread: Science is defiantly anti-fascist because it pursues truth, is necessarily collaborative, and relies on open communication. And because its falsifiability is incompatible with the cultism, faith-based belief systems, disinformation, and propaganda of Christian nationalism.

29 300 1.2K

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 2h

It’s on my 5K running playlist. Hypes me up on the daily.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 4h

Ok…some good news in response to bad news. New Yorkers are pushing our governor hard on this:

“New York will challenge a federal judge’s ruling allowing the company tearing down the Indian Point nuclear power plant to discharge radioactive water into the Hudson River”

www.lohud.com/story/news/l...

Hochul challenges judge's decision on Indian Point, saying Hudson is a national treasure

New York will challenge a federal judge's decision overturning a state law banning Holtec from discharging radioactive water into the Hudson River.

www.lohud.com

2 12

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 5h

Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen should be on any list with this title.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 5h

Hi, NYC! First time in the Bronx today and just got yelled at for not exiting fast enough at 149th St. 😍

I do have some things to say re: transportation + GHG emissions from NYC’s 1 million buildings.

I never tell anyone how to vote but elections should be informed by science so …happy to be here

Flyer advertising at a panel discussion and talk at CUNY at which I’m speaking on decarbonization efforts and the upcoming mayoral election

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 6h

Things I learn about my country by reading the foreign press:

A Rutgers history professor who taught a course on anti-fascism was blocked from leaving the US for Spain…informed at the boarding gate that the reservations for him and his family had been cancelled

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

www.theguardian.com

7 7

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 6h

🧪Fish need vitamin B1 (thiamine) just like everything else that lives. Turns out they get it from the microbiome of the rivers they swim in so yeah, we’re not going to be living in outer space. Get back to work protecting our only home against the tech bro fantasists.

www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc...

www.forbes.com

15 38

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 6h

Indeed. I’ve published a lot of that research myself. It’s nevertheless tough to get people to focus on issues that feel overwhelming because there is nothing they can do as individuals to solve the problem. Most US citizens, even those who care deeply, lack political skill sets to act collectively.

1 1 1

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 8h

Well I guess that’s my job…

1 1

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 8h

“One of my previous studies found that for every additional 10 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter of air there was a corresponding 10% increase in infertility risk”

Now her grant’s cancelled.🧪

Gift link: She Found a Link Between Air Pollution and Infertility www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

She Found a Link Between Air Pollution and Infertility

www.nytimes.com

2 17 32

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 9h

Ok then! Congratulations! The Melancholy of Resistance is now on my reading list. All I know is that it’s a critique of authoritarian ideology involving a whale and circus. Sounds perfect.

ABC News Bot (unofficial) @abcnewsbot.bsky.social · 9h

László Krasznahorkai has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, one of the world's most prestigious writing awards.

Breaking: Hungarian writer receives Nobel Prize in Literature for 'visionary oeuvre'

László Krasznahorkai has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, one of the world's most prestigious writing awards.

www.abc.net.au

1 2 8

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 16h

More OGs to emulate!

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 19h

Epistemological disorder, Don. You heard her.

2 1 1

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 19h

…And I said, “You didn’t. I’m a gay mom.”

Which makes no sense at all but in that moment it somehow did and then we both agreed that it’s just not that hard to respect people’s pronouns and now I think we’re friends. 2/2

1 23

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 19h

The supermarket cashier with the wispy mustache bagged my groceries, handed me the receipt, and said “thanks, mom!”

He then stared down in mortification and, in an octave lower, said “I meant ma’am.”

And I said “it’s ok, I am a mom!”

And then he said “I try not to misgender people.”
🥲

1/2

1 1 20

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

“Critics” = the truth

Reposted by Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 1d

no they're LITERALLY exaggerating this issue. there is absolutely no data backing up their claims. ffs just say that!!

NBC news: The discussions come as Trump has sought to deploy National Guard troops in several major cities — including Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon — saying they’re needed to reduce crime and protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from protesters. Critics have said that the Trump administration is exaggerating issues in those cities.

100 580 2.9K

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

Quakers: the OG challengers of violent Christian nationalism

Friends Journal @friendsjournal.org · 9d

Many of the men and women in the first generations of the Religious Society of Friends spent time imprisoned for challenging the intertwined religious and political power structures of England.

When you take on the world’s ruling powers, persecution comes with the job.

quaker.org/2025/09/29/s...

A portrait of John Perrot, a 17th-century Friend who was held in an insane asylum by the Vatican for several years after he tried to convince the pope to abandon Catholicism. (Since he spoke no Italian, and the pope spoke no English, the meeting went poorly.)

2 7 32

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

Indeed. Goes without saying in the adoptee rights world.

Price to adopt an infant = $40,000-80,000.

White babies cost more. 🥚

www.get-carrot.com/blog/adoptio...

Adoption costs: An in-depth guide | Carrot Fertility | Carrot Fertility

Learn the different costs you can expect during the adoption process — including private, independent, and foster-care, and international adoptions.

www.get-carrot.com

3 5

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

🥚 There is zero evidence for the claim that baby boxes save lives and lots of evidence that infant abandonment produces lifelong trauma for everyone and also lots of evidence that financial support of mothers—in amounts far less than the cost of baby boxes— would prevent relinquishment altogether.

4 21

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

🥚 Boxes for anyone to dump babies into were legalized by so-called safe-haven laws pushed by anti-abortionists and passed right after traditional welfare was ended in 1996 and women had to work to get benefits.

Now they’re proliferating.

This is an adoption supply chain.

time.com/7299476/baby...

Why Baby Boxes Are Suddenly Everywhere

Devices to help parents anonymously surrender an infant are spreading across the U.S., stirring emotions and debate.

time.com

3 10 26

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

This isn’t about Kelly and, relatedly, it’s worth reading if only for this sentence which I’ll be thinking about 4EVR:

“American conservatism has given itself over to an orgy of berserk hallucinations, nihilistic transgression and epistemological disorder.”

Gift: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

Opinion | Megyn Kelly Knows Which Way the Winds Are Blowing

www.nytimes.com

3 4 19

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

The name for such people are Good Germans.

Promise yourself right now that you won’t be one of them.

Order of operations:

See. Care. Think. Act.

Lori Lou Freshwater @lorifreshwater.bsky.social · 1d

People are going to look back and ask themselves how they did not see it.

4 14

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

Hard-won good news:

The deadline to begin air monitoring of benzene, chromium and other toxic pollutants emitted from 11 coke plants in w. PA won’t be pushed back after all.

Relentless citizen activism informed by good science 🧪 did this.

Never give up.

insideclimatenews.org/news/0710202...

EPA Drops Planned Delay in Compliance With Fenceline Monitoring at Coke Plants - Inside Climate News

Residents will no longer have to wait two years to find out whether they are breathing benzene and other contaminants.

insideclimatenews.org

1 29 89

Reposted by Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈

Julie Wash @jakwash.bsky.social · 2d

Crazy to poison our aquifers and drinking wells with extraction of fossil fuels which burn into planet-destroying emissions.

Lose-lose.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 2d

If you want to see all the other 200+ studies documenting how fracking-related activities have depleted or contaminated water sources, you can find them in the open-source fracking science compendium of which I’m an co-editor and co-author:

concernedhealthny.org/compendium/

Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure, Ninth Edition, October 19, 2023

The Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure (the Compendium) is a fully referenced compilation…

concernedhealthny.org

8 9

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 1d

LOVE you guys. Would be nowhere without the ILL librarians. ❤️