The Uneven Development of Industrial Hazards: Lead and Oil in the U.S. versus Mexico, 1930-1990

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)提供资金的。该项目是对美国和墨西哥选定的工业危害的历史研究，从大萧条到北美自由贸易协定(1994)之前。该项目是NSF资助的会议的直接产物，这些会议将工业危害的历史作为一个跨学科的“接触区”来探索，在这里，科技史越来越多地与环境和健康史、地理学、其他社会科学以及全球化的劳动和经济史相遇。研究问题是，20世纪中后期发达国家的工业危险历史轨迹与发展中国家的相比如何？该项目使用美国和墨西哥的铅冶炼厂和炼油厂的比较危险历史来回答这个问题。调查开始于这些工业过程是如何通过“全球组装”实现的，因为可移植的公司、技术和专业知识造就了对特定地区的适应。研究尤其集中在这些行业的关键危险因素的专家和制定的框架：冶炼厂周围的铅和二氧化硫，以及炼油厂周围的苯以及硫化氢和二氧化硫。对感知、调查、解释和预防危险的不同方法进行了审查，因为这些方法结合了两国的各种专家和相关的非专家。该项目还跟踪了每种可识别的工业危害方法随时间变化的方式。分析了这些方法上的差异可能如何反映了政治经济、监管战略、为特定类型的调查和监督提供资金和支持方面的差异；以及在各自的地方和国家权力平衡方面的差异。对几个当地工业场所进行了更详细的环境、档案和口头历史研究和比较：德克萨斯州埃尔帕索和奇瓦瓦市的铅冶炼厂；以及德克萨斯州比蒙特/亚瑟港和韦拉克鲁斯的波萨里加的炼油厂。知识价值：该项目(1)测试了将工业过程和毒素作为科学对象的传记方法的潜力和局限性，将社会文化和建构主义的见解与政治经济学和环境史的唯物主义方法相结合；(2)阐明了这两个国家的工业危害是如何不均衡地演变的，以及原因；(3)通过专注于了解、监测和控制铅和苯的低水平暴露的不断演变的制度，将这两个国家的转变与更具预防性的工业危害的科学、法律和政治进行了比较；(4)比较了这些工作场所内的危害与强加给当地社区、环境和消费者的危害之间的关系。更广泛的影响：由此产生的书首次对发达国家和发展中国家的工业危害历史进行了深入比较。它为许多对这一问题的进一步研究提供了先例，尽管这一研究尚未得到充分研究，但却更加重要。在方法论上，这本书为更多的文化主义和物质主义学术风格如何相互交融和有效对话，以及科学史学家和他们的学科邻居如何应对更新的全球范围的全球化叙事提供了一个新的模式。第二个影响是为当代从业者和政策制定者提供重要的历史背景和见解。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (public Law 111-5). The project is an historical study of select industrial hazards in the United States and Mexico, from the Great Depression to just prior to the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994). The project is a direct outgrowth of NSF-funded conferences that have explored the history of industrial hazards as an interdisciplinary "contact zone," where the history of science and technology has increasingly met up with environmental and health history, geography, other social sciences, and the labor and economic history of globalization. The research question is how did the mid-to-late twentieth-century trajectory of industrial hazard history in developed nations compare to that in developing ones? The project uses a comparative hazard history of lead smelters and oil refineries in the United States versus Mexico to answer this question.The investigation begins with how these industrial processes materialized through "global assemblages," as portable corporations, technology, and expertise forged adaptations to particular locales. Research concentrates especially on expert and lay framings of key hazards in these industries: lead and sulfur dioxide around smelters, and benzene as well as hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide around refineries. Contrasting approaches to the perception, investigation, interpretation and prevention of hazard are examined, as these coalesced among a variety of experts as well as relevant non-experts in both nations. The project also tracks the ways each identifiable approach to industrial hazards changed over time. These differences in approach are analyzed for how they may have reflected differences in political economy, regulatory strategies, in funding and support for particular types of investigation and oversight; as well as in the respective local and national balances of power. More detailed environmental, archival and oral historical study and comparison of a few local industrial sites is conducted: the lead smelters at El Paso, Texas and Chihuahua City, Chihuahua; and the oil refineries at Beamont/Port Arthur, Texas and Poza Rica, Veracruz. Intellectual Merit: The project (1) tests the potential and limits of a biographical approach to industrial processes and toxins, as scientific objects, for integrating socio-cultural and constructivist insights with materialist methods of political economy and environmental history; (2) clarifies just how unevenly industrial hazards in these two nations evolved, and why; (3) compares the turns in these two nations to a more precautionary science, law and politics of industrial hazards, by concentrating on evolving regimes for understanding, monitoring and controlling low-level exposures to lead and benzene in particular; (4) compares the ways hazards inside these workplaces came to be related to those imposed on local communities, environments, and consumers. Broader Impacts: The resulting book offers the first in-depth comparison between the history of industrial hazards in a developed and a developing nation. It provides a precedent for many further studies of this as yet under-examined but ever more important contrast. Methodologically, the book provides a new model for how more culturalist and materialist styles of scholarship may blend and effectively speak to one another, and for how historians of science and their disciplinary neighbors may address the newer world-scale narrative of globalization. A secondary impact is providing important historical context and insight for contemporary practitioners and policy-makers.