The Biopolitics of Farmworker Health in Methyl Iodide Regulation and Adoption

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Understanding how and why chemicals come to be used and when they are withdrawn from use is an important question for policy and for social studies of science. Agricultural chemicals are an especially critical site for the investigation of these processes, given the stakes for growers, policymakers, producers, consumers, and farmworkers. This study contributes to understanding these dynamics through an investigation of the causes of the approval and subsequent withdrawal of methyl iodide, a soil fumigant widely used in strawberry production that was designed to replace methyl bromide, which is planned to be phased out of use by 2015. Methyl iodide was known to have negative effects on human health, but was approved nonetheless. The study investigates how spatial, chemical and social knowledge of the effects of methyl iodide on farmworker health and their offspring and the availability of substitutes entered into regulatory and adoption debates and decisions. Methods include analysis of public hearings and public comment, interviews with constituent groups that participated in the regulatory debates, and interviews with representatives of the strawberry industry. The research results provide new theoretical tools for understanding how scientific knowledge, regulation, and ethical concerns about biological consequences of chemicals intersect to shape the commercial viability of chemicals. More broadly, the research illumiminates how the spatial distribution of chemicals and ethical concerns shape chemical regulation. Research findings are disseminated to policymakers, farmworkers, and to academic researchers. The wide dissemination of research findings enables a range of actors to have access to knowledge needed to engage the process of chemical regulation more effectively.