Standard Grant: Perflourinated Chemicals: The Social Discovery of a Class of Emerging Contaminants

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary This project investigates the social discovery of per-fluorinated chemicals (PFCs), which are hazardous yet widely used in industrial production. They are an unusual class of chemicals with significant widespread, low-level consumer exposure, important potential climate change emissions, and identified contaminated communities exposed to high levels of contamination. Specifically, this project will examine scientific, regulatory and advocacy action to restrict the use of PFCs. It uses a social discovery approach, which explains the growing awareness of a previously unrecognized or poorly understood social problem, disease, condition, environmental hazard, or other social phenomenon. Examining PFCs as a class of chemicals, the proposed research will investigate the emergence of lay awareness, scientific research, government involvement, media coverage, litigation, and advocacy. The results of this project will provide a greater understanding of why there is a lack of data about the risks of most in-use chemicals. Following on other social scientific studies of chemicals, this work can encourage a more precautionary approach in chemical regulation by identifying and analyzing the consequences of delayed and incomplete restriction of hazardous chemicals. It will also aid in toxics reduction and green chemistry, and it will directly benefit public awareness by disseminating research findings to scientific, advocacy, governmental, and occupational groups. This research will highlight the need for chemical manufacturers to move toward safer chemicals. Technical Summary This project will provide a thorough understanding of PFCs as a case study for emerging contaminants: how they are used and regulated, how science and activists respond to these contaminants, and why certain groups choose to take up the issue of PFCs. This will contribute to a sociological understanding of how people interact with a contaminated environment through a comparison of site-specific and ubiquitous chemical exposure; to the sociology of risk, by recognizing how the origins of risk can shift without necessarily decreasing the levels of risk; and science studies about how scientific knowledge is created, communicated, and used to inform policy. This project will contribute to the growing number of social science studies on chemical policy, allowing for comparison across different social science studies of chemicals. This research is also significant in combining those broader chemical policy issues with site-specific research on contaminated communities? experience. Research questions to be addressed in the project include the following. How were the dangers of PFCs discovered in the 1970s and re-discovered in the 2000s? How have major contamination episodes impacted the awareness, regulation, and research related to PFCs? What have been the successes and failures of advocates for banning or regulating the use of PFCs in industrial production and in household and consumer products? What competing approaches to risk assessment and risk management are used by corporate PFC producers, regulatory agencies, scientists, affected residents, environmental health organizations, and academic scientists?