Half a million barrels of toxic waste lurking beneath the waves just miles from California’s coastline sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller. Yet this environmental catastrophe is real, as documented in the award-winning film Out of Plain Sight, co-directed by journalist Rosanna Xia and filmmaker Daniel Straub. The documentary follows Xia, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and coastal reporter for the Los Angeles Times, as she investigates a haunting discovery made by University of California, Santa Barbara, professor David Valentine. During a routine research expedition, Valentine’s underwater robot captured images of corroded barrels scattered across the seafloor near Catalina Island — remnants of a massive toxic dumping operation dating back to the post-World War II era. Rather than presenting a retrospective account of events, the film unfolds in real time. Viewers experience each revelation alongside Xia as she connect the dots between Valentine’s discovery, historical records, and the ongoing health and environmental consequences of the once widely used insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). The documentary illustrates how DDT, although banned in the U.S. in the 1970s, continues to impact marine ecosystems and human health today. “DDT is the original ‘forever chemical’ before that term even existed,” Xia told Mongabay. Xia’s reporting carries the torch of Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring first drew public attention to the dangers of DDT. “Rereading Silent Spring decades later and seeing how these messages are still concerns and themes we’re living with today was striking,” Xia said. “The public would not know about…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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