Troubled Waters: Tracing Waste in the Delaware River: An Interdisciplinary Documentary Project: Art & Film

Filmmaker Roderick Coover has done a multi-part project about the Delaware River, including a Chemical Map, a film, and the artist book described here. Coover speaks on the Chemical Heritage website about his Delaware project.

These public performance pieces in Tibet and Sichuan involved the public in demonstrating the contamination in river water. The web site includes descriptions of many other artist-initiated projects around water issues.

In an era of high-speed international commerce, safety standards and import inspection procedures are riddled with loopholes. The result? Quantities of dangerous substances found in goods manufactured overseas have risen dramatically. This program investigates the alarming global mobility of synthetic toxins, tracing egregious-yet often repeated-hazardous material violations from supplier to storefront. Textile producers in India, a popular retail outlet in Germany, and ports and ground-shipment depots in between all reveal their roles in transporting industrial residues and waste. Activists, government authorities, and workers all-too-familiar with toxic exposure speak out on the dangers.

This CNBC documentary looks at garbage - how we create it, how we get rid of it, and how we often just put it out of sight all at significant cost to individuals and society alike.