In her 1997 book, Living Downstream, Steingraber blends poetic anecdotes and vivid descriptions of reckless industrial and agricultural pollution with a wealth of data from scientific and medical literature. The result is a compelling analysis of what is known and unknown about the relationship between environmental factors and cancer. Steingraber bemoans the imbalance between funding devoted to studies of genetic predispositions to cancer and the relative paucity of funding devoted to studies of potential environmental contributions to cancer incidence. She argues persuasively that while we can do little to change our genetic inheritance, there is much that can be done to reduce human exposure to environmental carcinogens. Easton, Thomas (2009). Sources: Environmental Studies. 3. p. 157.
Sandra Steingraber has the same ideals as Rachel Carson. Her text, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment, dives into the ideals of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Steingraber, a woman with bladder cancer, tries to explain and research how and why cancer is linked to the environment. Steingraber stresses issues such as chemical pesticides being rooted indirectly to our body. For example, just like Carson, Steingraber comes up with startling facts. Steingraber states, "in 1996 a study investigated six-fold excess of bladder cancer among workers exposed years before to o-toludine and aniline in the rubber chemicals department of a manufacturing plant in upstate New York. Levels of these contaminants are now well within their legal workplace limits and yet blood and urine samples collected from current employees were found to contain substantial numbers of DNA adducts and detectable levels of o-toulidne and aniline."
"To the 89 percent of Illinois that is farmland, an estimated 54 million pounds of synthetic pesticides are applied each year. Introduced into Illinois at the end of World War II, these chemical poisons quietly familiarized themselves with the landscape. In 1950, less than 10 percent of cornfields were sprayed with pesticides. In 1993, 99 percent were chemically treated," (page 5).
"Living Downstream" is also the basis for a documentary movie by The People's Picture Company, which chronicles Steingraber's personal struggles as a cancer survivor and her significant contributions as an ecologist and cancer prevention activist.
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