Review: Phosfate

In 2005, filmmaker Erik E. Crown was diagnosed with cancer and says that doctors really didn't know what kind of cancer it was or how to treat it. He was told he was among a growing number of patients with hybrid-cancers thought to have been a result of environmental factors.

Once he was told that his cancer was incurable, Crown made a big decision. He gave up his life and decided to travel the world investigating environmental pollution and crime, hoping to identify sources that may have been contributing to climbing cancer rates.

If that's your mission and you put even a little bit of effort into it, you'll undoubtedly wind up in Florida, where cancer is the leading cause of death and the skirting of all environmental rules and regulations are the norm. Once here, it'll take about no time flat to hone in on phosphate mining, the state's toxic little secret that–despite the havoc the industry has wrought on our environment and human health–flies dangerously below the radar of most Floridians.

I've been covering the house of horrors that is phosphate mining for more than a decade. It's one of those issues that once you come to fully understand its dynamics, you cannot help but scratch your head (or beat it against a wall), wondering how corporations get away with turning the state into a toilet for the sake of something for which there is no sustainable business model were the producers to bear the full cost of bringing their product to market (as capitalism supposedly prescribes).

Crown does an outstanding job of hitting all of the high notes in what amounts to a tremendously engaging and impressively accessible film. The doc's 95-minute runtime flies by, as Crown presents a tightly-paced tale of the human cost of rampant greed and destruction. He hits the impacts on the aquifer and prevalence of sinkholes, the fluoride problem, the follies of "reclamation science" and the myriad of ways in which politicians and regulators turn their backs to an influential industry that simply throws piles of blood money at every potential hurdle.

However, what makes the film so effective is the human element. Crown shows you those who are literally waiting to die in the heart of so many cancer clusters and allows them to tell their stories. Families racked with guilt for failing to understand what staying in their homeswhen Big Phosphate came to town meant. The small business owners who've lost almost everything and the sense of desperation and struggle felt by those for which other options are scant.

Phosfate is an excellent one-stop primer on what is arguably the most critical issue facing our state. I'd recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the many perils of phosphate mining. The digital version can be streamed for rent or purchase here, or you can purchase a DVD from Amazon with free Prime shipping.