Jon J. Whelan's STINK! proves a fine American answer to the European doc, Our Daily Poison

Important Update: 
STINK! hits VOD -- via Amazon, iTunes, 

Vudu, Google Play, and Vimeo -- on February 16, 2016.

Coming about five years behind a similarly-themed French/Belgian documentary, Our Daily Poison, the new American film STINK! attacks a problem all too relevant to how and why the population of the USA is living with (and dying from) the dangerous chemicals residing in just about everything we eat and wear and use in our daily life. Director and co-writer (with Bryan Gunnar Cole), Jon J. Whelan, after purchasing as a Christmas gift some children's pajamas for his daughters from the popular manufacturer, Justice, discovered that those PJs stank. Literally. Trying to determine what chemicals were used in the pajamas proved daunting and frustrating, with absolutely no help coming from the manufacturer.

Worse, when he had to pay for their chemical analysis himself, Whelan (shown at right) learned that, in addition to two known endocrine disruptors, the PJs contained an already-banned flame retardant. Out of all this has come one of the most important documentaries of the year, if not among the most artful. But what Stink! lacks in style and efficiency, it more than makes up for via the information presented and the accompanying, vital call to arms. Whelan lost his wife (and his two daughters their mother) to cancer some time back, and so the movie has at its core a personal element that adds sadness and grief to the proceedings. If the filmmaker concentrates a bit too much on that lost love (and he does), the lion's share of his film is devoted to letting us know how very little we know about what the products we use in our daily life actually contain.

He also fills us in on why we do not know this vital information: So in hock to lobbyists and moneyed interests is our Congress (not to mention the majority of our Supreme Court: Citizens United, anyone?) that even the FDA is not able to do the job for which it was created. We consumers, as this movie indelibly shows, are guinea pigs for industry. We end up doing the testing on the products that ought to have first been tested in laboratories. Oh, but that would cost the corporations extra money!

The ever-growing rise in autism, various cancers, reproductive problems, diabetes and obesity can all be traced to environmental factors. And while most industrialized nations try to protect their citizens from toxic chemicals, the USA does not bother with this. Instead it creates laws and loopholes whereby corporations prosper at the expense of citizens. Via a nice blend of history, statistics, snippets of various congressional hearings, talking head interviews, and folk who suffer from allergic reactions to smell (high-schooler Brandon is  one such fellow), a clear picture emerges of a country in thrall to consumerism with no real thought for the health of the consumer. "It's not a safety system," as one expert points out, "it's a marketing system."

The movie is occasionally clever and funny, too, as when Mr. Whelan decides to invent his own perfume (called Ignorance Is Bliss, below), stocking it with ingredients your won't want to know -- all of this quite legal. When we finally meet a storied lobbyist (Steve Rosario, above), and then a couple of our wealthy elected officials whom lobbyists have unduly influenced, your blood will really begin to boil. Whelan does a fine job of tracking and talking to these people, and listening to their "doublespeak" and "nonspeak" should make you wonder why those nuts-with-guns never seem to turn their weapons upon those who actually deserve it. Meeting Lance of New Jersey and Cal from California provides high-water marks in elected sleaze -- at least until Donald Trump reaches the Oval Office.)

Stink! is enough to get you off your ass and onto the streets in protest. Whelan even covers subjects like the chemicals involved in "fracking," as well as why even the state laws more restrictive-of-industry are now under fire from our bought-off Congress (which has in no way improved since the time of that earlier, excellent documentary, The Best Government Money Can Buy?). Opening today in New York City at the Cinema Village and on December 4 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall, Stink!, running 91 minutes, ought to raise one -- and fast.

Environmental DVD must-see: Marie-Monique Robin's thoughtful, scary OUR DAILY POISON

If you're anything like me, at this point in time you've seen quite a number of documentaries that explore what is happening to humans, courtesy of the growing dangers to our environment from chemicals, pesticides, plastics, food additives and all the rest. And, yes, the imminence of global warming rather reduces all these individual threats to something minor in comparison. Still, the damage we've suffered and continue to suffer from a combination of corporate greed, bad science and bought-out scientists seems both incredible and disgusting.

The gift of Marie-Monique Robin's film, OUR DAILY POISON, is that its author, shown at left, never raises her voice as she goes on a hunting expedition to learn about what we are currently putting in our bodies via exposure to all these things, and then to determine whether the supposedly recommended daily intake of many of these poisons (and they are exactly that) are anywhere near what might be considered "safe."  Ms Robin seems to me a tireless (but never tiresome) investigator who is able to ferret out information and then insist that her interviewees answer her questions as directly and honestly as possible. She is specific, detailed and knowledgeable, piecing together her evidence extremely well, and hers is by far the best investigation-on-film about the dangers to our environment from these chemicals and hormones that I have yet seen.

In fact, one of the key points she and her scientists make here is how chemicals and hormones are nothing like the same thing, where dosage and daily intake are concerned. As one scientist succinctly explains, "The entire process of calculating an acceptable daily intake is based on false assumptions."

It gets better. And worse, of course. Nailing the U.S.'s own Food and Drug Administration, as well as the ESSA (European Food Safety Authority), as Ms Robin does, is bracing, but because these organizations wield the power, very little is able to be done. Due to the filmmaker's intelligence and probing, we learn all sorts of fascinating, frightening stuff. I think it was when the documentary got into the subject of the veracity of a particular study -- along with its "statistics" and what you might call "zombie mice" -- that Robin's ability to educate, entertain and alarm us fully kicked in for me. From there onwards, I didn't want to miss a single word or view that she has to offer us.

As the movie makes quite clear -- via evertyhing from talking-head interviews to charming archival footage and artful drawings -- it is less that the powers-that-be actually want to poison us than that they merely want to keep things on an even keel, with the corporations kept happy and profitable and the bad news kept away from any media attention (the latter is not so difficult in this time of media obeisance to corporate power -- and often corporate ownership, too).

What we learn here about everything from pesticides to endocrine disruptors, from aspartame to plastics, is genuinely frightening. Simply for the anecdote about scientific studies that used plastic tubing and/or containers, the movie is worth seeing! And there is so much more. The film ends with a look at India as a country with a terrific anti-cancer diet. But even India is now "Westernizing" to the point that Monsanto may have already undone the "health" that was present back in 2010, when this documentary was made. (It is a little additionally scary that a film this important has taken so long to surface here in the USA.)

As usual, the "bad guys" refused to be interviewed, and so, while some can claim that the film is "one-sided," this is only because the other side managed not to be confronted. Available now from the indispensable Icarus Films and running nearly two full hours in length (trust me, the doc is not overlong), Our Daily Poison is a terrific addition to the growing catalog of evidence of how the human race is effectively destroying its own health and habitat.

Chevannes' and Shields' LIVING DOWNSTREAM has FSLC debut on Oct. 20

A shining example of the "personal as political," the new documentary LIVING DOWNSTREAM is only 55 minutes long, but what a bracing amount of content and importance, not to mention feeling, is contained therein. The movie tracks the mission and the story of ecologist and cancer survivor (for now) Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., who struggles righteously and quietly to call attention to what man-made carcinogens from the production and disposal of chemicals are doing to the health of ourselves and our children.

The film's title comes from a parable told at its beginning about villagers who live along a riverbank and the bodies, more and more of them, that come floating down-stream. These good people try to help the drowning victims but it never occurs to them to go upstream to discover who is pushing the people into the river. By the end of this short documentary, the filmmakers -- director and producer Chanda Chevannes (above) and editor-producer Nathan Shields

(below) -- along with their subject, Dr. Steingraber, make certain that we understand that we are those villagers and that we had better do our best to see that these murders cease. As does the recent doc Pink Ribbons Inc., this one also questions why so much time, money and effort are spent looking for a "cure" for cancer, rather than simply preventing its spread via these vile toxins.

The film's secret weapon is simply Steingraber herself. The woman's research is on the mark, while her quiet, reasonable voice somehow makes itself heard quite strongly and beautifully. A bladder cancer survivor, she explains that "There is lots of cancer in my family, but the punch line of my story is that I was adopted." This knowledge made her pay ever closer attention to the environment. But who, she asks us, gets to decide just how bad a certain health problem is -- those who are sick, or those who are creating and disposing of those chemicals that are making us sick? As usual, it's the latter, for that's how we "regulate" and "decide" here in America, whether it's about Wall Street and business or food and drugs.

We get the history of DDT vis a vis WWII (and how the left-over chemicals developed at that time were put to use without the proper testing), along with that of Rachel Carson, the scientist who, fifty years ago, warned the USA and the world of the what was already happening, even as she herself was dying of cancer.

We learn about Atrazine, banned by the European Union but still in heavy use here in the USA. We meet Steingraber's family -- husband and kids -- and even her cousin John, a farmer who is trying to use Atrazine as carefully as he can. Good luck.

In a speech she gives before a packed house she uses breast milk, in a sealed bottle that is passed from one audience member to the next, as an example of what's best about a child's nourishment that has now been compromised by our industry. We see Buzzard's Bay in New Bedford, Massachu-setts, the most polluted site for PCB's in the USA (and possibly the entire world). Yet progress is being made here, so why not elsewhere?

This woman knows what she is doing. In another important speech, she explains to her audience that this country claims that there is not enough evidence to ban Atrazine; yet there is now more evidence of its harm that there was that of PCBs when they were finally outlawed. Yet Steingraber is never strident. Neither is this movie. Instead, it is timely, intelligent, deeply felt and very well communicated. Consider it another must-see.

Living Downstream will have its Film Society of Lincoln Center premiere at the -- correction: it will not be screening at the Walter Reade Theater, as I stated earlier, but at the FSLC's new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center this coming Saturday, October 20, one time only at 2pm, followed by a 45-minute Q&A moderated by Mountainfilm director David Holbrooke. The 55-minute film will also be making appearances in cities around the country; to view the schedule, simply click here. And finally, the film will be shown on Outside TV, at some point in November.