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

本项目将分析全氟烷基和多氟烷基物质（PFASs）的社会发现。自20世纪50年代开始生产，这组化学品用于消费品，工业表面活性剂和消防泡沫。尽管使用了几十年，但直到21世纪初，美国公众、军方或监管机构才知道全氟辛烷磺酸的潜在毒性和污染范围。该项目将考察个人、利益相关者团体、诉讼当事人和科学家在60多年的大规模生产中发现和重新发现全氟辛烷磺酸的情况。任何发现都有关于先前无知的问题；该项目追溯了监管框架对全氟磺酸对人类和环境的影响产生科学无知的方式。因此，除了确定有关全氟磺酸风险的科学知识的产生，该项目还追踪了当前监管框架如何产生与全氟磺酸的环境暴露和人体毒性有关的科学无知。这种社会学调查将发现社会发现过程的异同，并跟踪利益相关者的行为。该项目质疑，为什么从20世纪60年代开始，关于PFAFs影响的科学发现直到21世纪后期才形成，尽管在长达数十年的时间里，人们在工人、野生动物、最终在全球人口的血液中发现了PFAFs的污染。本项目将采用参与性观察、深度访谈和档案文件分析来解释这一意外和不均衡的发现过程。该方法包括在多个地点进行为期七个月的参与性观察，以了解科学家、工业、监管机构和受污染社区如何应对全氟辛烷磺酸。将进行半结构化访谈。其目的是研究科学研究、企业行动和民间活动是如何开始的，以及利益相关者如何产生科学数据并将其转化为知情的监管决策。最近的研究强调，孤立潜在健康结果的单一原因反映了一种科学和监管逻辑，无法理解化学接触的新颖性。主要的监管数据收集规范、风险管理框架和法律追索途径与非线性途径、代际时间线以及慢性化学品暴露所产生的潜在危害形式不一致。社会学在识别这种不一致的逻辑方面具有独特的地位，因此可以帮助我们将价值观、假设和激励分开，以澄清和重新想象更具适应性的组织形式。该项目将有助于增加有关化学政策的社会科学研究的数量，促进未来化学品和化学类别的社会科学研究之间的比较。

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.