REFLECTION: WEEKS 7 & 8

Woo Hoo! Spring Break has finally arrived! Not that I have anything special planned but it’ll be nice to just RELAX!!! Here’s a snapshot of what went down for weeks 7 and 8.

Week 7:
Last week we were busy, it started with Reading 16 III Winds: The Chemical Plant Next Door. I liked this reading because it was writing in a personal manner. It was about a girl from Buffalo who lived near Borden Chemical. The girl’s family members were all getting sick and she was placing the assumption that it was from the chemical plant. I really liked it because it didn’t really say that was the exact reason why her family was so sick but that there is a possible positive correlation between the two. We all had different views about our interpretations of this reading but overall I felt that the class was assuming a slight correlation between the sickness and the chemical plant.

We also completed an Eye Opener last week. We chose our favorite cosmetic item that we used and typed it into the database of Environmental Working Group. It then told us how healthy our item is for the environment, ourselves, etc... I chose to test out my favorite tinted skin lotion and my results were pretty good! I scored a 3 out of 10. My results showed that my lotion could lead to cancer, and toxicity but not allergies. I was really surprised to see this considering it was organic, just shows that you really have to pay attention to the chemical found in your everyday things. My face lotion was not tested on animals which I was pretty happy to see but lots of other peoples results said that their product was!

During Tuesday and Thursday of last week we watched a documentary called, Green by Laura Dunn. I really liked this movie and was glad I had got this one to complete for my review. In the documentary it talked about Cancer Alley, which is a 100 mile stretch in Louisiana in which 150 petrochemical plants lie. Throughout the documentary Dunn interviewed many different people that live in the stretch. She asked them about what they thought about the chemicals that they’re creating and if they feel there is a correlation between the chemical plants and the illness. The most touching part of the documentary was when the children were interviewed. Seeing children with such rare forms of cancer was so depressing. I really believe in the correlation between Cancer Alley and the illness those children obtained.

Week 8:
This week we read, Chapter 31: Privatizing Water. This reading tied in with our documentary for this week called Thirst. The main concern of the reading and documentary was that people are actually fighting for the rights of water to be owned by different companies. I can’t believe people want to have the privilege of owning water!!! I do not think that anyone should own our water, and have the privilege of charging us high prices for it! There are so many companies that are trying to make a profit on anything that they can think of! On Thursday we were having a few technical difficulties with the movie and never got to see the end. Instead, we had a class discussion on the issues talked about in the documentary and how we felt about privatizing water. The main question was what we’d stand up for in our lives… I am kind of a nerd and feel that everything we’ve talked about so far has been so informational for me that I would probably stand up for it all.