NickLawFilmAnnotations1

Nicholas Lawrence Homo Toxicus
 * 1) Homo Toxicus, Carol Polquin, 2008
 * 2) Human create thousands and thousands of chemicals every year without knowing what sort of impact they will have on our health or the environment. We are all taking a risk by exposing ourselves to so many chemicals. The film also argues towards the end that the risk management strategy employed by companies today may not be adequate for human safety. The risk management model should be replaced with a more precautionary approach.
 * 3) Narrative follows a single person, Carol Polquin in her adventure to explore chemicals affects on human society. The film is often her internal dialogue and showcases a few of her personal experiments. (i.e. asking vendors if their beef has hormones in it). In addition to that she interviews many officials/scientists/victims from relevant agencies and problem areas. There is an adequate amount of scientific information given. For example in the beginning of the film she interviews scientists who are doing studies on chemical exposure on mice. The film also has a great emotional appeal. For one, she has her own blood analyzed to see what trace amounts of toxins she has. The fact that the narrator has toxins her blood gives the feel that no one is safe, not even the viewer. Also there is clear emotional appeal to the Inuit children with auditory problems. These children are in their position without any wrongdoing of their part.
 * 4) This film addresses many sustainability issues. The number one is pollution. The entire film is about chemicals in the environment that aren’t naturally there. Our lifestyle is filling the environment with chemicals that nature has never seen before. Another sustainability issues is how the link between cause and effect has a big role to play in how we perceive a problem. What struck me the most from the film is how hard and buried the effects of having trace amounts of chemicals in your body are to see. There were those lovely charts of health problems of the Indian reservation population. There was definitely something affecting their health, yet linking that to the nearby chemical plants is insanely hard. Another sustainability issue the film makes note of is corporate influence. Corporations influence policy. This means steps are taken to protect profits instead of the environment.
 * 5) What I found most compelling was the chart of all the health problems of children on the Indian reservation. There was most certainly something wrong the health of the community. The posters were covered in stickers. This was effective for a few reasons. One the poster and sticker combination is a visual representation of something that is hard to see in your everyday life. It brings in the health problems of the community into whole where you can then clearly see the overall trend. Also to see all those stickers and then think that it has nothing to do with the nearby chemical plants is just absurd.
 * 6) Most of the material presented in the film was compelling. I guess what appeared weakest to me was the issue of sterility in farmers. I just don’t relate to farmers. There aren’t many of them so you don’t really see them walking around town. Especially in the northeast. Also sterility isn’t very damaging to your health. I know it’s harder for them to have children but they aren’t having respiratory problems or thyroid problems; their sperm is just lazy. Their right to reproduce has been violated but I don’t care much for reproduction, especially at this point in my life. I feel there are more pressing concerns about the affect of chemicals than sterility.
 * 7) Audience the film best addresses is anyone who is exposed to manufactured products on a daily basis. This is quite a large group of people. But if I had to choose one group it would be individuals in industrial countries. There those people are most likely to be exposed to the most chemicals. Not only do they eat the most processed food, but they also live among the most manufactured products. For example plastic is everywhere. It’s in my phone, my water bottle, this computer upon which I type. It’s besides my bed. It’s in my bed. I’m surrounded by everywhere I go. Thus citizens in developed countries are most likely to experience negative effects of chemical exposure. But the thing is no one is safe. Chemicals leach out of products and get in the water. They get blown up into the air. They get around. Thus people who live in remotes areas are exposed along with everyone else.
 * 8) I felt that the environmental education value of the film could be enhanced by having more environmental effects of chemicals. Of this I am unsure because if you evaluate the film strictly on environmental education then a good portion of it was spent on analyzing the effects in humans which isn’t really dealing with the environment. I mean the film did address some environmental issues; like those frogs. But, who cares about frogs? That was the best environmental issues the film could come up with? Yet the film isn’t trying to save the environment as much as our own health. So having the film focus more on environmental issues would have improved its environmental education yet would have detracted from its ability to appeal to people.