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Summary Of Living Downstream By Sandra Steingraber

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In the first chapter of “Living Downstream” by Sandra Steingraber discussed about personal experiences living in Illinois and discovering how much the landscape has changed over the years. In addition to the changing landscape, cancer, especially breast cancer, has increased in the prairies of Illinois and pesticides usage may cause. Much of the discussion first begin with the change of landscape as the prairies of Illinois has become a place for farming and pesticides. As farming became an important aspect of Illinois, pesticides were created to remove any bugs or insects from the product that is being farmed. A few pesticides formulas that came to be are atrazine, dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). …show more content…

It points how such little matters like these can contribute to discovering what factors play role in increasing breast cancer in different states of the United States. Although, there still insufficient information of breast cancer, we do know how to lower the possibility of obtaining such cancer. This chapter relates to other Core 1 topics such as what do we know and don’t know, classification, and the origin of species. The first chapter relates to these topics because we need to understand what we know before trying to figure what we don’t know. Just like the pesticides and breast cancer, what do we know about and what we should find more about. At the same time, classification plays an important role in understanding these complex figures that we still need to understand. At the same time, origin of species also relates to the chapter 1 because pesticides became a product that was meant to remove any bugs or insects. But, no one thought the pesticides, atrazine, DDT, and PCBs, would lead to breast cancer for women in Illinois. When I read this chapter, I did not expect pesticides to be a cause of breast cancer. Normally, they are just to get rid of bugs and insects from plants and would have thought it cause one of the worst cancer in women. Nevertheless, Chapter 1 tries to understand why atrazine, DDT, and PCBs are some lead causes of the

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