Living Downstream

Essential viewing for all that care about the environment
The title is to be interpreted both literally and as a metaphor. The literal interpretation is that the chemicals that are used in agriculture, specifically the herbicide Atrazine, run off the land and are then found throughout the environment. As a metaphor, the title is used to express the general principle that all chemicals, independent of where they are used, "run off" into all areas of the world.
The video is based on the book by Sandra Steingraber and she uses her personal experience with bladder cancer at a young age and the recurring threat that it will return as a starting point for her personal and professional quest to call attention to the dangers of the use of toxic chemicals in the environment. The herbicide Atrazine was banned in the European Union in 2004, but is still used in the United States despite strong evidence that it is an endocrine disrupter. In other words, it alters the function of hormones and the malfunction of hormones is known to be a cancer...

Pollution's Effects on Life from Big to Tiny
Living Downstream is the film companion to the book Living Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment. Both center on ecologist Sandra Steingraber; Steingraber was diagnosed with bladder cancer after living a seemingly healthy life. She investigated how and why she would receive this diagnosis and discovered just how badly the pollution of her area is affecting life (human and nonhuman) around it. Living Downstream follows Steingraber as she recovers from her cancer and as she travels across North America to advocate against using pollutants for monetary gain at the expense of the environment.

This movie covers a considerable amount of ground -- how pollutants are made, how they travel, how they affect biological organisms, and how scientists observe these results. For me, the movie's strengths lie more with the more global advocacy of the message rather than the...



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