Backstreet Boys' Kevin Explores
Environmental Issues
Source: MTV
Before closing out the Seattle-area stint of the Backstreet Boys' world tour on Monday, Kevin Richardson made a brief pit stop to learn about the pits of the environment.
Richardson, who recently founded Just Within Reach: An Earth Foundation, visited the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to talk with experts about connections between environmental degradation and cancer.
"I feel like there are ties between the health of our Earth and the health of our people," the 29-year-old singer told the Associated Press. "We're still learning about that yet. But I feel in my heart there is a connection. I mean, we know that the more toxins you breathe, drink and eat, the higher the risk of cancer. The more carcinogens you put in your body, the higher the risk."
Richardson's father, firefighter and iron-industry worker Jerald Wayne Richardson, died of colon cancer in 1991 at the age of 49.
The Richardson family's Eastern Kentucky hometown was hit in October with America's largest spill caused by waste from coal mining when more than 250 million gallons of "black water" leaked into streams and lawns.
"What I learned here today is that they don't know a whole lot about it," Richardson told the Seattle Times. "We're just going to have to keep digging."
Richardson told reporters that his foundation plans to team up with the National Geographic Society and other groups to produce an educational video on ways people can improve the environment.
The dark-haired, steel-eyed pop star also said he wants to make public-service announcements with Erin Brockovich, whose namesake movie, along with John Travolta's "A Civil Action," helped inspire Richardson's crusade. Both films deal with industrial pollution and contaminated drinking water.
Richardson is not the first Backstreet Boy to lend his fame and fortune to a good cause. Brian Littrell has his own foundation at St. Joseph's Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and Howie Dorough started the Caroline Dorough-Cochran Lupus Memorial Foundation in honor of his late sister.
The Backstreet Boys continue the North American leg of their worldwide Black & Blue tour on Thursday (March 1) in Oakland, California.
-Corey Moss