LibGuides: ISTC Sustainability Film Festival 2014: Living Downstream

Living Downstream Synopsis & Trailer

Produced and distributed by the People's Picture Company, Inc., this documentary is based on the acclaimed book by ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. This poetic film follows Sandra during one pivotal year as she travels across North America, working to break the silence about cancer and its environmental links. After a routine cancer screening, Sandra receives some worrying results and is thrust into a period of medical uncertainty. Thus, we begin two journeys with Sandra: her private struggles with cancer and her public quest to bring attention to the urgent human rights issue of cancer prevention.

But Sandra is not the only one who is on a journey—the chemicals against which she is fighting are also on the move. We follow these invisible toxins as they migrate to some of the most beautiful places in North America. We see how these chemicals enter our bodies and how, once inside, scientists believe they may be working to cause cancer. Several experts in the fields of toxicology and cancer research make important cameo appearances in the film, highlighting their own findings on two pervasive chemicals: atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, and the industrial compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Their work further illuminates the significant connection between a healthy environment and human health.

At once Sandra's personal journey and her scientific exploration, Living Downstream is a powerful reminder of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our air, land, and water.

The DVD(s) of this film should be used for educational, non-commercial use only. The Prairie Research Library has the educational edition, which includes a 1-hour version (used for the festival) and the feature-length version of the film with bonus features. For more information on the film, see www.livingdownstream.com.

Learn More

Agricultural Health Study
In 1993, scientists from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began a research project known as the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) to evaluate the role of agricultural exposures in the development of cancer and other diseases in members of the farming community. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health joined the study in 2000.

The AHS is also providing an opportunity to assess the effects of diet, cooking methods, and other lifestyle and genetic factors on the risks of cancer and other diseases. The results will provide information that can be used to create a safe work environment and a healthy lifestyle for agricultural workers and their families.

Use the resources below to learn more about industrial and agricultural pollution and its effects on human health.

ATSDR: ToxFAQs
The ATSDR ToxFAQs™ is a series of summaries about hazardous substances developed by the ATSDR Division of Toxicology. Information for this series is excerpted from the ATSDR Toxicological Profiles and Public Health Statements. Each fact sheet serves as a quick and easy to understand guide. Answers are provided to the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) about exposure to hazardous substances found around hazardous waste sites and the effects of exposure on human health.
CDC: Cancer Clusters
Information on what constitutes a cancer cluster, relevant publications and resources, and contact information for the CDC.
Having Faith
As an ecologist, Sandra Steingraber spent her professional life observing how living things interact with their environments. Now, 38 and pregnant, she had become a habitat—for a population of one. Having Faith is Steingraber's exploration of the intimate ecology of motherhood. Using her scientist's eye to study the biological drama of new life being knit from the molecules of air, food, and water flowing into her body, she looks at the environmental hazards that now threaten pregnant and breastfeeding women, and examines the effects these toxins can have on a child. Having Faith makes the metamorphosis of a few cells into a baby astonishingly vivid, and the dangers to human reproduction urgently real.
ISTC Sponsored Research Projects: Atrazine
Results from the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center's Sponsored Research Project Database for studies related to atrazine.
ISTC: PPCPs in the Environment
The frequent occurrence of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in the aquatic environment is an emerging environmental issue in the U.S. Two important sources of PPCP contaminants in the environment are municipal/industrial sewage treatment plants (STPs) and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Scientists at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) at the University of Illinois are conducting several studies associated with PPCPs: (1) developing analytical methods using LC/MS/MS; (2) investigating environmental fate and transport; (3) identifying contamination sources, and (4) remediating or mitigating environmental contamination from PPCPs. This section of the ISTC web site includes a report on PPCPs in the environment, a bibilography of relevant publications, and presentation from a symposium on the subject held at ISTC in April 2008.
Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy
On her deathbed, Sue asked her sister for one thing: to write about the connection between the industrial pollution in their hometown and the rare cancer that was killing her. Fulfilling that promise has been Nancy Nichols' mission for more than a decade. Lake Effect is the story of her investigation. It reaches back to their childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, an industrial town on Lake Michigan once known for good factory jobs and great fishing. Now Waukegan is famous for its Superfund sites. Drawing on her experience as a journalist, Nichols interviewed dozens of scientists, doctors, and environmentalists to determine if these pollutants could have played a role in her sister's death. While researching Sue's cancer, she discovered her own. Doctors and even family urged her to forget causes and concentrate on cures, but Nichols knew that it was relentless questioning -- by government as well as individuals -- that could save other lives.
Living Downstream in the Classroom
A comprehensive, interdisciplinary guide to the movie. It is aimed at high school and university instructors and can be downloaded for free.
Living Downstream: A Scientist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment
In her early twenties, biologist and poet Sandra Steingraber was afflicted with cancer, a disease that has afflicted other members of her adoptive family. Writing from the twin perspectives of a survivor and a concerned scientist, she traces the high incidence of cancer and the terrifying concentrations of environmental toxins in her native rural Illinois. She goes on to show similar correlation in other communities, such as Boston and Long Island, and throughout the United States, where cancer rates have risen alarmingly since mid-century. At once a deeply moving personal document and a groundbreaking work of scientific detection, Living Downstream will be a touchstone for generations, reminding us of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the integrity of our air, land, and water.
National Geographic Kids Network: What's in Our Water
For grades 3-6. In the What's in Our Water? unit, you will investigate water pollution. You will discover how rainwater travels through a watershed and how pollutants can get into groundwater. You will find out where their tap water comes from, and you will learn that human activity and water quality are closely connected.
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, is one of 27 research institutes and centers that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The mission of the NIEHS is to discover how the environment affects people in order to promote healthier lives.
Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis
Nothing could be more important than the health of our children, and no one is better suited to examine the threats against it than Sandra Steingraber. She blends precise science with lyrical memoir. In this book she speaks as the scientist mother of two young children, enjoying and celebrating their lives while searching for ways to protect them--and all children--from the toxic, climate-threatened world they inhabit. Each chapter focuses on one ingredient of childhood and explores the underlying social, political, and ecological forces behind it. Through these everyday moments, Steingraber demonstrates how closely the private, intimate world of parenting connects to the public world of policy-making and how the ongoing environmental crisis is, fundamentally, a crisis of family life.
RCC Review of "Aquatic Ecotoxicology and One Health"
Overview of a 9/29/12 Powerpoint Presentation by Dr. Val Beasley. Dr. Beasley's presentation included information about aquatic toxicology, focusing primarily on the effects of fertilizer and pesticides on fish and amphibians. Other species were also mentioned. He included toxicological concerns about PBDEs (flame retardants chemicals) that bioaccumulate in fish, and are associated with adverse effects in humans and in domestic pets. He discussed the One Health Concept, a new, unifying ecological approach to the study of disease and its prevention, that incorporates elements of veterinary, human and wildlife medicine-and has become an established specialty at certain veterinary schools.
Report: Herbicide spurs reproductive problems in many animals
University of Illinois News Bureau article, 11/28/11. An international team of researchers has reviewed the evidence linking exposure to atrazine – an herbicide widely used in the U.S. and more than 60 other nations – to reproductive problems in animals. The team found consistent patterns of reproductive dysfunction in amphibians, fish, reptiles and mammals exposed to the chemical.
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson's passionate concern for the future of our planet reverberated powerfully throughout the world, and her eloquent book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation
Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. Although it involves the dumping of industrial toxic wastes, there are many parallels between this story and the one told in Living Downstream.
ToxFaq for Atrazine
This fact sheet answers the most frequently asked health questions about atrazine. For more information, you may call the ATSDR Information Center at 1-888-422-8737. This fact sheet is one in a series of summaries about hazardous substances and their health effects. This information is important because this substance may harm you. The effects of exposure to any hazardous substance depend on the dose, the duration, how you are exposed, personal traits and habits, and whether other chemicals are present.
U.S. EPA Information on Atrazine
Includes links to EPA's review of the pesticide.
US EPA: Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)
EPA provides various paths for the public to access information about PCBs. On this web site you will learn about PCBs as they are managed under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the PCB regulations found at 40 CFR 761. This site focuses on the management, cleanup and disposal of PCB wastes and the management of PCB-containing materials and equipment still in use.
US EPA: TRI Information for You
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) tracks the management of certain toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment. U.S. facilities in different industry sectors must report annually how much of each chemical is released to the environment and/or managed through recycling, energy recovery and treatment. (A "release" of a chemical means that it is emitted to the air or water, or placed in some type of land disposal.) The information submitted by facilities is compiled in the Toxics Release Inventory. TRI helps support informed decision-making by industry, government, non-governmental organizations and the public. Information on what happens at a TRI facility, risk information, and more.
US EPA: Water Quality Facts
Includes general information on water quality, urban runoff, nutrient pollution and hypoxia, wetlands and marine debris.
USDA: Organic Agriculture
Organic agriculture produces products using methods that preserve the environment and avoid most synthetic materials, such as pesticides and antibiotics. USDA organic standards describe how farmers grow crops and raise livestock and which materials they may use. This section of the USDA website includes information on the organic standards, becoming certified, financial resources for farmers, and more.

What You Can Do

Champaign-Urbana Prescription Drug Take-Back Program
Three locked collection boxes are available in the lobbies of local police departments at:
-- Urbana Police Department, 400 South Vine St., Urbana
-- Champaign Police Department, 82 E. University Ave., Champaign
-- University of Illinois Police Department, 1110 W. Springfield Ave., Urbana

Below are links to resources to help you assess the environmental quality of your water, safely dispose of unwanted medications, and other things you can do to prevent environmental pollution by synthetic chemicals.

Environmental Working Group: Consumer Guides
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has compiled a variety of consumer guides to help the public avoid exposures to potentially harmful chemicals found in products and other environmental risks. EWG is an environmental health research and advocacy group. You may wish to explore their web site to learn more about relevant issues and ways to take action.
How to Clean Up Our Water: Ten Simple Ways You Can Help Reduce Pollution and Runoff
Everyday household activities contribute to water pollution. When it rains, fertilizer from lawns, oil from driveways, paint and solvent residues from walls and decks and even pet waste are all washed into storm sewers or nearby lakes, rivers and streams -- the same lakes, rivers and streams we rely on for drinking water supply, boating, swimming and fishing. Also, improper handling of materials around the house can lead to pollution. The NRDC lists some ways you can help reduce your impact on waterways.
How to Dispose of Unwanted Medicine & Personal Care Products
The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and UI Extension maintain this site, which provides information on where to dispose of these products in states throughout the Great Lakes region of the US, tools for schools, resources on starting a medicine collection event or program in your area, and a wealth of related information.
National Take-Back Initiative
The National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day aims to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications.
Organic Consumers Association
Directory of organic food, personal care products, pet products, etc.
Scorecard
Scorecard is a resource for information about pollution problems and toxic chemicals. Find out about the pollution problems in your community and learn who is responsible. See which geographic areas and companies have the worst pollution records. Identify which racial/ethnic and income groups bear more than their share of environmental burdens. Then take action as an informed citizen - you can fax a polluting company, contact your elected representatives, or get involved in your community.
U.S. EPA's Surf Your Watershed
Find your watershed using the form below. Once you locate your watershed, simply click on the first link, "citizen-based groups at work in this watershed," to find a listing of organizations that are working to protect water quality. You may wish to contact one of these groups to find out about cleanups, monitoring activities, restoration projects and other activities.
US Food & Drug Administration: How to Dispose of Unused Medicines
Includes guidelines for drug disposal, why precautions are necessary, information on environmental concerns, inhaler disposal information, a link to sign up to receive consumer updates by e-mail, and an RSS feed for consumer updates.
What You Can Do at Home and in the Garden
Tips from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on living greener. Includes a section on preventing water pollution.

Film Evaluation

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