Sandra Steingraber's Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in An Age of Enironmental Crisis

The cold, hard facts about our man-made world reverberate in Sandra Steingraber's Raising Elijah with a stultifying rhythm, and a general unease settles in about our naivety regarding how seemingly inert products in our daily lives are reaping an environmental toll.  When her investigative prowess, honed as a research biologist, is turned towards arsenic in playsets, agrichemicals in our food, and environmental disasters at the hands of multinational corporations, she at first succumbs to an intolerable rage.  And as anger can sometimes do, in the minds of some, it becomes her driving force for action.  She reaches her tendrils out to other scientists, physicians, volunteers, and parents, and with clarity of purpose they pinpoint the likely chemical culprits which at approved levels should be benign, but which are increasingly found in our environment - in our bodies - at alarming levels.  Here is a biography of chemicals and how they make their way into soil, into our playgrounds, into our point sources of water.  They have well-heeled interests, largely corporations, ready to lobby for them, but who will advocate for our health?  Steingraber makes a strong point, using several case examples, that we the people have had to speak up on our own behalf, becoming the watchdogs in an arena which increasingly favors  entrenched industries bent on unheeded capital gain.  Never are we so aware of these potential threats than when they begin to affect our personal health, and so her narratives are strongest when her own children appear to suffer the consequences of simply being in proximity to certain manufactured products.  There is a veritable crescendo of concern when in the final chapter she examines hydraulic fracturing of shale to obtain petroleum.   All the descriptions of her local foodshed - the clean water and living soil that they depend on -  build to this moment, for here lies a process that threatens to undermine the sustainable bedrock of her community, and the integrity of the surrounding wetland and woodland ecosystem.  In her eloquent preface, she conjures the memory of Elijah Lovejoy, abolitionist, who was riddled with bullets and killed in 1837, who would not refrain from speaking out against slavery despite death threats to himself and his young family, and whose resoluteness and moral courage before the mob, and indeed, his martyrdom, inspired many to think critically about this institution.  We have read about such display of character in our turbulent history, and part of the beauty of Steingraber's testament is the call to rise up with the same spirit, a caring, investigative, perhaps angry spirit, to stop a senseless assault on the very thing which we depend upon for our health - our environment.