Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Social Re-Discovery of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will analyze the social discovery of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). In production since the 1950s, this group of chemicals are used in consumer products, industrial surfactants, and fire-fighting foam. Despite decades of use, the potential toxicity and scope of contamination of PFASs were not known to the U.S. public, military, or regulatory agencies until the early 2000s. This project will examine the discovery and re-discovery of PFASs by individuals, stakeholder groups, litigants, and scientists over six decades of mass production. Inherent in any discovery are questions about prior ignorance; this project traces the ways in which regulatory frameworks produced scientific ignorance pertaining to the effects of PFASs on humans and the environment. Therefore, in addition to identifying the production of scientific knowledge regarding the risks of PFASs, this project traces the ways in which current regulatory frameworks produce scientific ignorance pertaining to environmental exposures and human toxicity of PFASs. Sociological investigation of this kind will find similarities and differences in social discovery processes and track stakeholder behavior. The project questions why scientific discovery about the effects of PFAFs that began in the 1960s did not take shape until the late 2000s, despite the decades-long discovery of contamination in workers, wildlife, and eventually the blood of the entire global population. This project will use participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival document analysis to account for this unexpected and uneven discovery process. The methodology includes seven months of participant observation at multiple sites to learn how scientists, industry, regulators, and contaminated communities respond to PFASs. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted. The intent will be to examine how scientific research, corporate action, and lay activism began, and how stakeholders produce and translate scientific data into informed regulatory decisions. Recent research emphasizes that isolating a single cause of a latent health outcome reflects a scientific and regulatory logic that fails to comprehend the novelty of chemical exposure. Dominant regulatory data collection norms, risk management frameworks, and legal paths of recourse do not align with the non-linear pathways, intergenerational timelines, and often latent forms of harm that arise from chronic chemical exposure. Sociology is uniquely positioned to identify such incongruent logics, and thus can assist in pulling apart values, assumptions, and incentives to clarify and re-imagine more adaptive organizational forms. This project will contribute to the growing number of social science studies on chemical policy, facilitating future comparison across social science studies of chemicals and chemical classes.