It was one startling fact that led Wendy Mesley to investigate the cause of rising cancer rates last year—and all in the midst of her own breast cancer treatments.

“When I found out a child born today has a one in two chance of getting cancer I was shocked,” says Mesley, a former Ryerson journalism student in the 1970s and the current host of CBC’s Marketplace.

“I thought, “That’s really whacked. Why aren’t we doing anything about it,” she says. Mesley took action. In her CBC Marketplace documentary Chasing the Cancer Answer, Mesley uses her personal experience as a cancer survivor and skills as a journalist to investigate what’s causing such high cancer rates and why there is so little action taken to prevent the disease. “Shit happens, people get cancer. But I knew I needed to go out there and confront this as someone who’d been affected. It was important to the story,” says Mesley. In the documentary, Mesley blasts blaming patients’ lifestyles for their cancer.

Photo courtesy of CBC Television CBC broadcaster Wendy Mesley.

“I’ve always been a health nut and I got cancer,” she says. “I knew there had to be something else.”

She says she found out there is — namely a major drought of preventative efforts and a growing slew of carcinogens (substances that produce cancer) around us.

In one a dramatic scene in her documentary Mesley grills a top administrator at the Canadian Cancer Society on why they aren’t lobbying to have carcinogens removed from everyday products most people aren’t aware contain them.

“We went after the Canadian Cancer Society because it’s a story about setting priorities,” Mesley says. “The woman said to me, “We could probably get rid of two carcinogens, but what about the other 2000?”

“It’s just a cynical attitude. My generation may not be able to do anything for ourselves, but what about the next, or the one after that?” she says.

Since Chasing the Cancer Answer aired in March, Marketplace has received thousands of e-mails from people across the country thanking them.

The documentary ruffled a few feathers too.

In an open letter to Mesley, the Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada write, “…rather than being informed, Canadians were left misinformed by only a partial telling of the story.”

Mesley is unperturbed by such claims.

“People who say that we didn’t make our case didn’t do their homework,” she says. “The evidence is out there and, yes, it’s complicated.”

Mesley says her goal was to prod the right people to get some answers.

“We’re not told a lot about what causes cancer in things we encounter every day. Some people do know,” Mesley says. “Ideally, it’s the right to not be contaminated.”