Since World War II, there has been an explosion in the development of synthetic chemicals. Steingraber also holds a master’s degree in creative writing, and Living Downstream is beautifully written, a satisfying and engrossing interweaving of her own personal fight with cancer and the results of her investigation and research into the state of our relationship with toxins. But Living Downstream is not simply a stilted recitation of facts. Steingraber is uniquely qualified to explore the question of how cancer and the toxins we release into the environment are linked. Wouldn’t it be better not to make ourselves sick in the first place? It is indeed very apt to the way in which we look at cancer. Sandra Steingraber begins Living Downstream with this parable. So preoccupied were these heroic villagers with rescue and treatment that they never thought to look upstream to see who was pushing the victims in. And so they went to work devising ever more elaborate technologies to resuscitate them. These residents, according to parable, began noticing increasing numbers of drowning people caught in the river’s swift current. The people who lived there were very kind. Da Capo Press 2010 (Second Edition)(First Edition 1997). Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment by Sandra Steingraber.
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