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

该项目调查全氟化学品（PFCs）的社会发现，全氟化学品是危险的，但在工业生产中广泛使用。它们是一类不同寻常的化学品，消费者接触程度低，分布广泛，具有重要的潜在气候变化排放量，并使已确定的受污染社区受到高度污染。具体而言，该项目将审查限制使用全氟化学品的科学、监管和宣传行动。它采用社会发现的方法，解释了以前未被认识或理解不深的社会问题，疾病，状况，环境危害或其他社会现象的日益增长的意识。研究全氟化学品作为一类化学品，拟议的研究将调查外行意识，科学研究，政府参与，媒体报道，诉讼和宣传的出现。该项目的结果将使人们更好地理解为什么缺乏关于大多数正在使用的化学品的风险的数据。在对化学品进行其他社会科学研究之后，这项工作可以通过确定和分析对危险化学品的延迟和不完全限制的后果，鼓励在化学品管制方面采取更加预防性的做法。它还将有助于减少有毒物质和绿色化学，并将通过向科学、宣传、政府和职业团体传播研究成果，使公众意识直接受益。技术概要本项目将以PFCs为研究对象，对PFCs的使用和管理方式、科学界和社会活动家对PFCs的反应、以及为什么某些团体选择关注PFCs问题等进行深入研究。这将有助于通过比较特定地点和无处不在的化学品暴露，从社会学角度理解人们如何与受污染的环境相互作用;通过认识到风险的起源如何在不一定降低风险水平的情况下发生变化，促进风险社会学;以及关于科学知识如何创造、传播和用于为政策提供信息的科学研究。这一项目将促进越来越多的关于化学品政策的社会科学研究，从而可以对不同的化学品社会科学研究进行比较。这项研究在将这些更广泛的化学品政策问题与对受污染社区的具体地点研究相结合方面也很重要。体验.该项目要解决的研究问题包括以下几个方面。如何在20世纪70年代发现并在2000年代重新发现PFCs的危险？重大污染事件如何影响与全氟化学品有关的认识、监管和研究？倡导禁止或管制全氟化学品在工业生产和家用及消费品中的使用的人士取得了哪些成功和失败？全氟化学品生产企业、监管机构、科学家、受影响居民、环境卫生组织和学术界科学家采用了哪些相互竞争的风险评估和风险管理方法？

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?