Documentary Review #3: Flow

Flow: How did a Handful of Corporations Steal Our Water (2007)

 

In Bolivia one in 10 children will die before the age of 5 due to water related illness.  Up to 7 million people a year worldwide get sick from drinking tap water and this film predicts that 40% of stomach flu cases come from drinking tap water. 

However, Flow demonstrates that turning to bottled water is not a good alternative either.  Currently, Americans spend 10.8 billion dollars a year on bottled water (a 100 billion dollars a year worldwide) but the bottled water market is poorly regulated and independent researchers are finding that bottled water contains the same agricultural pesticides and urban contaminants as tap water. 

The most frightening chemical found in drinking water is Atrazine, a Swiss manufactured pesticide and weed killer that is banned in the European Union but legal in the United States.  It is the most common contaminate found in surface water and ground water in the U.S, according to this film.  It has also been linked to ovarian cancer, low sperm counts, prostate cancer and breast cancer but the Environmental Protection Agency (at the time this film was relaeased) saw no need to follow the EU’s lead.

Although Flow touches on many of the same issues as Blue Gold and the current literature, it is unique in its focus on water degradation from agriculture and urban development.  This film looks at rather convincing correlations between specific changes in water quality and cancer and infertility rates.  Because 70% of the world’s fresh water supply is currently used for crop irrigation and because most of those crops use large amounts of chemical pesticides, Salina focuses much of her attention on how water policy specific to agriculture causes the over consumption and rapid degradation of water. 

This film also sheds light on how rapid urbanization, at rates not seen since the industrial revolution, in combination with lagging infrastructure and sanitation regulation are the cause of quality of life issues all over the world. This is due both to degradation of water from pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and other man made chemicals as well as the inability to treat water for these contaminates.

Flow suggests grassroots advocacy and community owned and operated treatment plants as a way to prevent a handful of companies from having sole ownership of the world’s drinking water.  The most interesting narrative of unconventional solutions was about water treatment with UV rays.  With this method of water treatment (scientifically similar to SODIS) Ashok Gadgil claims he can lower the cost of water per person in a community to $2 per year.  Flow reminds us that there are cheap alternatives to desalination and pressurized piping that work for poor and rural communities.  Affordable approaches like these seem even more appealing when we are reminded that the UN predicts that it would take a 30 billion dollar a year effort to provide safe, clean drinking water to every human on the planet.