Living Downstream
An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Sandra Steingraber, biologist, poet, and survivor of cancer in her twenties, brings all three perspectives to bear on the most important health and human rights issue of our time: the growing body of evidence linking cancer to environmental contaminations. Her scrupulously researched scientific analysis ranges from the alarming worldwide patterns of cancer incidence to the sabotage wrought by cancer-promoting substances on the intricate workings of human cells. In a gripping personal narrative, she travels from hospital waiting rooms to hazardous waste sites and from farmhouse kitchens to incinerator hearings, bringing to life stories of communities in her hometown and around the country as they confront decades of industrial and agricultural recklessness. Living Downstream is the first book to bring together toxics-release data -- now finally made available through under the right-to-know laws -- and newly released cancer registry data. Sandra Steingraber is also the first to trace with such compelling precision the entire web of connections between our bodies and the ecological world in which we eat, drink, breathe, and work. Her book strikes a hopeful note throughout, for, while we can do little to alter our genetic inheritance, we can do a great deal to eliminate the environmental contributions to cancer, and she shows us where to begin. Living Downstream is for all readers who care about the health of their families and future generations. Sandra Steingraber's brave, clear, and careful voice is certain to break the paralyzing silence on this subject that persists more than three decades after Rachel Carson's great early warning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thirty-five years ago, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring warned of the destructive impact of chemicals on the environment. Steingraber, a biologist, builds upon Carson's work, focusing on the link between chemicals in the environment and increasing cancer rates: "From dry-cleaning fluids to DDT, harmful substances have trespassed into the landscape and have also woven themselves, in trace amounts, into the fibers of our bodies." A cancer victim herself, Steingraber weaves a dark and pithy trail through the lives of cancer victims, their environments and increasing cancer rates. Using her home territory of Illinois as a backdrop, she successfully connects the environmental contamination of DDT, dioxin, PCB's and many other chemicals that increase the cancer rates both in nature and humans. In a chapter titled "Fire," she describes the mass building of garbage incinerators throughout the country and how they have impacted our environment by creating cancer-causing agents like dioxin and furans. Steingraber's writing is clear and concise, displaying complicated chemical and biological transformations with elegance and ease. We are living downstream, watching the increasing flow of cancer, Steingraber says, but our efforts are so consumed in curing cancer that we forget to investigate its cause. The author's well-documented account should help to rectify this disturbing and dangerous situation.
Customer Reviews
Living Downstream
This is a beautifully and thoughtfully written book. It explained so much of what had happened to me in life.