Varda Burstyn Digital Bibliography

Introducing the Online Archive

As an independent writer, scholar and consultant, over the years Varda Burstyn’s extensive body of work in popular print media, in radio, documentary film and fiction, and in scholarly journals and books has tackled controversial issues in government, popular culture, science, technology, health and the environment. She has been described as an iconoclast, as prescient, as “ten years ahead of the curve.” One thing is certainly true: her work consistently looks below the surface of accepted accounts and calls out the underlying realities. This site provides a brief work biography and an archive of selected works in Varda’s main areas of interest.

For the last fifteen years, most of her work has been produced for several Ontario government processes related to research, policy, and health system development for epidemic level environmentally-linked illnesses.  Now, in addition to her public writing,  her major reports from this period have been made available here. As well, a link to her informational website and blog on toxics and health, Dispatches from the Chemical Edge.com can be accessed directly from this site.

The works included in this selected archive are here because they are still being referenced or regularly sought out via other channels, or because Varda believes they have something helpful to add to present-day conversations or because she likes them and wants other readers to enjoy them as well. Thus, as well as numerous links, a number of full-text pdf files of particular articles and papers are also provided.