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

该项目将分析全氟烷基物质和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）的社会发现。自 20 世纪 50 年代以来，这组化学品开始生产，用于消费品、工业表面活性剂和消防泡沫。尽管使用了几十年，但直到 2000 年代初，美国公众、军方或监管机构才知道 PFAS 的潜在毒性和污染范围。该项目将研究个人、利益相关者团体、诉讼当事人和科学家在六十年的大规模生产过程中对 PFAS 的发现和重新发现。任何发现都固有地存在着对先前无知的质疑。该项目追溯了监管框架如何导致人们对 PFAS 对人类和环境影响的科学无知。因此，除了确定有关 PFAS 风险的科学知识的产生外，该项目还追踪了当前监管框架如何产生有关 PFAS 的环境暴露和人类毒性的科学无知。这种社会学调查将发现社会发现过程中的相似点和差异，并跟踪利益相关者的行为。该项目质疑为什么自 1960 年代开始关于 PFAF 影响的科学发现直到 2000 年代末才形成，尽管数十年来发现工人、野生动物以及最终全球人口的血液受到污染。该项目将利用参与观察、深入访谈和档案文件分析来解释这一意外且不平衡的发现过程。该方法包括在多个地点进行七个月的参与者观察，以了解科学家、行业、监管机构和受污染社区如何应对 PFAS。 将进行半结构化访谈。 目的是研究科学研究、企业行动和非专业活动是如何开始的，以及利益相关者如何产生科学数据并将其转化为明智的监管决策。最近的研究强调，孤立潜在健康结果的单一原因反映了未能理解化学品暴露的新颖性的科学和监管逻辑。 主要的监管数据收集规范、风险管理框架和追索法律途径与非线性途径、代际时间线以及长期化学品接触所产生的潜在危害形式并不相符。 社会学在识别这种不一致的逻辑方面具有独特的优势，因此可以帮助分解价值观、假设和激励措施，以澄清和重新想象更具适应性的组织形式。该项目将有助于越来越多的关于化学品政策的社会科学研究，促进未来对化学品和化学品类别的社会科学研究的比较。

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.