Standard Grant: Mobilized Social Group Organizations Around Per- and Polyfluoralkyl Substances

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The proposed project will examine the rapid formation of a national, networked social movement across the United States in response to industrial and military uses of per- and polyfluorinated compounds (PFASs), a class of over 3,000 chemical compounds with a broad range of adverse health outcomes. The project will examine the factors facilitating the rapid development of this movement, and the ways in which it shapes science, chemical policy, and cleanup levels. This project will provide residents and community groups affected by PFAS contamination with a greater awareness of how they can partake in the scientific process, public education, and environmental policy at local, state and federal levels. It will create greater connections among dispersed communities, and among regulators and scientists working on these issues. The project has a water testing component that will provide direct knowledge and interpretation of the extent of PFAS contamination in an impacted community, and that will be used to show how effective widely adopted remedial methods are at removing these contaminants. The research team will analyze the characteristics of local organizing using its Contamination Site Database, which has extensive data for 77 contaminated sites across the U.S.; new sites are to be added as they are discovered. The team will quantitatively and qualitatively assess what factors influence whether local social-movement organizations develop at a given contamination site (such as contamination characteristics, nature of media coverage, and demographics), as well as the outcomes that are achieved (such as remediation, shift in regulatory or advisory standards, and biomonitoring activities). The team will also analyze the origins, influences, priorities, and outcomes of activism by these social movement organizations by conducting 80-100 semi-structured interviews in 20-30 locations across the U.S. Team members will also use network analysis techniques on interview data and social media posts to explain and visualize how activists share information, join and expand old networks, and create new ones.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.