Living Downstream: A Scientist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment

In the mid to late 1970s, the US government enacted various environmental policies to address the legal limits for pesticide residues in food and animal feed and establish guidelines for manufacturing companies to test products for toxicity. What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of these acts? In what ways have they helped provide awareness of toxins in the environment? How could one or more of them be improved to address environmental contamination today?

Scientific experiments on animals have helped identify many human health conditions and their causes, but testing potentially carcinogenic chemicals on laboratory animals is complex and expensive. In 2007, The National Research Council began using robots to evaluate chemicals, which is far more efficient than traditional testing but has limitations; for example, it can’t read and interpret significant amounts of data at once. Consider whether the benefits of traditional testing outweigh the faster, automated approach and whether certain circumstances might call for one method over the other.

Steingraber asserts that breast cancer has decreased since the early 2000s but that explanations for the decrease vary. What are some of the explanations she cites? Does one explanation seem more plausible than the others in the time since Steingraber's book was published?

The sense of place refers to an emotional response to a particular area or environment. How does Steingraber create a sense of her rural Illinois home? To what extent does her integration of personal memoir heighten her scientific argument—or detract from its importance?

In several passages, Steingraber refers to the passage of time. When her friend Jeannie dies, she says, “Time had become such a strange commodity in the preceding month” (46). In another instance, she writes, “I’ve learned to avoid quickness—like dashing out to the post office before it closes—because sudden movements seem to rush time forward even faster” (50). What other references to time does Steingraber make, and how do they emphasize the urgency of her argument?

Discuss the role of the Arctic Paradox phenomenon and global distillation in the movement for preventing carcinogenic environmental contamination. What revelations have these phenomena uncovered since early cancer research?

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of trash-burning incinerators. Do the risks of this method of waste management outweigh the advantages? How have zero waste programs addressed the risks of incinerators and landfills?

Biomonitoring is a significant advancement in uncovering the causes of specific kinds of cancer—but can’t detect past exposures to toxins or the possible future cancers that biological markers can indicate. How might research combining biomonitoring and biological markers increase interest in future cancer studies?