Doctoral Dissertation: An Ecology of Nuclear Weapons Testing

Montana State University, Bozeman MT

Investigators

Abstract

This award is for a doctoral dissertation research improvement grant. The project will examine the development of ecological ways of understanding the effects of radioactive fallout upon human health during the atmospheric nuclear weapons testing period in the United States. Specifically, it will examine how ecological conceptions of critical biological and ecological pathways of exposure served to reformulate notions of risk and safety during the late 1950s and early 1960s. This project will apply a number of recent methodological and theoretical approaches in the history of science, environmental history, and historical geography to provide new and intellectually productive interpretations regarding the safety practices of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) during the early years of the weapons testing program. Three primary research questions drive this investigation, and they are the following. How did ecological approaches for conceptualizing the relationship between radiation and human health emerge and structure the fallout controversy? In what ways did the political imperatives of nuclear weapons testing shape the institutional practices of the AEC and the scientific practices of scientists engaged in the question of radiation safety? How did scientific activism both within the AEC and outside of the Commission during the fallout controversy affect notions about the relationship between science and public policy? Although this dissertation is historical in nature, it will inform current policy debates regarding risk management and environmental regulation. By focusing on the divergent practices of many sciences, this dissertation will illuminate the complex ways that one comes to know objectively the risks associated with environmental pollutants. It will demonstrate that policy planners discount outmoded notions of objectivity that rely on correspondence theories of truth; it will suggest instead that policy makers also bring to bear a number of scientific ways of thinking to questions of risk perception and management.