Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Sandra Steingraber's Living Downstream

We believe there is compelling evidence that damage to humans and the worldwide environment is of such magnitude and seriousness that new principles for conducting human activities are necessary.
~ From "Afterword" in Living Downstream

Internationally recognized ecologist, science writer, and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., is the author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1997) the first book to show the relationship between data on toxic substances released into the environment and data from cancer registries across the United States. Steingraber, who was diagnosed with bladder cancer while in her early twenties, not only correlates her cancer with environmental toxins in her native rural Illinois; she also produces evidence for environmental causes of cancer in other places in the United States, such as Long Island.

Currently scholar-in-residence at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, Steingraber followed her much-heralded Living Downstream with Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood (Perseus Publishing, 2001), part memoir and part investigation of fetal toxicology. She is working on a new book about the environmental life of children and pediatric environmental health activism, which Steingraber views as a necessary civil rights movement. (Her DVD on that subject is available for purchase here. See her essay "But I Am a Child Who Does" here.)

Now, Steingraber's first book has been made into a 90-minute documentary produced by The People's Picture Company, Toronto, Canada.  The trailer for the film is below. A second edition of Living Downstream is scheduled for release by Da Capo Press next month.
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In conjunction with release of the film, Steingraber is contributing weekly essays here. Steingraber also is a contributor to Orion Magazine. A list of Steingraber's articles for Orion is here

Excerpts from Living Downstream can be found on Steingraber's Website.

Read "Downstream: An Interview with Sandra Steingraber" here.

Take time to watch this moving talk that Steingraber gave at the 2008 Bioneers Conference.

3 comments:

Kathleen Overby said...

Gulp. Thx for passing this on. We sleep while this giant wakens.

Sunrise Sister said...

A moving testimony! Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

xo

Louise Gallagher said...

Thank you Maureen.Very powerful. I watched and listened to her speech and I was humbled.. and scared. I wonder... What are we doing to Mother Earth? When will we stop killing her?