Living Downstream is an exposé about the presence of numerous toxic chemicals in every sphere of life, from the water people drink, to the air people breathe. It had its Ottawa premiere Oct. 29 at the Mayfair Theatre.
The film features Sandra Steingraber, a biologist who has done extensive environmental studies both in the town in which she was raised (Perkin, Ill.) and around North America as a whole.
Producer Chanda Chevannes underlines the omnipresent nature of these chemicals.
“When the film screens, people almost always ask how they can protect themselves,” she said.
“But when chemicals are in our air, food, and water, they will be inside of us. And there is no way to erect a barrier strong enough to prevent that.”
The film also follows Steingraber’s experiences as a cancer patient. Steingraber was inflicted with bladder cancer as a teenager, and the documentary hypothesizes the existence of environmental links to a number of cancer varieties.
Although the environmental carcinogens are ubiquitous, Chevannes said that society needs to take preventative measures, rather than after the fact.
“The only way we can truly protect ourselves from toxic chemicals is to stop creating them in the first place. And that is a project that requires us all to work together,” Chavannes said.
The movie opens by describing the multiple sources of chemicals posing a health risk to those living in her hometown. Steingraber then hypothesizes that cancer can be caused by one’s environment, as opposed to the previous paradigm of genetics.
Her adoptive family’s medical history gives credence to her theory, since her mother and several of her uncles suffered from cancer as well.
Once she finds satisfactory supporting evidence at home, she travels across North America to discover other similarly affected regions. Testing for levels of chemicals like DDT, an insecticide, atrazine, an herbicide, and PCBs, a group of industrial chemicals, showed a dangerous presence of all three (plus dozens of others, but the documentary does not have the time to cover them all) throughout America.
Atrazine, because of its water solubility, can be dispersed hundreds of kilometres away, to places it has never been used. And despite the fact that the American government has banned both DDT and PCBs, they are still present in the environment because of their longevity.
Even more disturbing is atrazine’s effects on wildlife. In lab tests ordered by atrazine manufacturer Syngenta, African clawed frogs were subjected to water containing 1/13th the amount considered safe for human drinking water by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This disrupted the frogs’ endocrine system, turning them into hermaphrodites.
In humans, it affects females’ ability to produce breast milk, interfering with their nursing abilities. And it increases estrogen levels in males, leading to higher rates of breast cancer.
The film also documents Steingraber’s medical travels. The story begins decades after she had overcome her teenage fight with cancer.
However, she continued – and continues – to receive regular follow-up care.
In the movie, Steingraber undergoes a number of imaging tests, along with a nerve-wracking close call. It becomes apparent, and entirely understandable, that she fears relapse on an almost pathological level.
With the damage portrayed in the picture, one wonders what is stopping regulators preventing the use of the toxic chemicals that remain in use today, such as atrazine.
Although all of the substances presently used serve a purpose, there are alternatives. After all, when DDT and PCBs were prohibited, substitutes were found.
“The fact that we successfully banned PCBs and our economy didn’t crumble, I think is a testimony to what we could do with the other 80,000 synthetic chemicals out there,” Steingraber said in the film.
