Doctoral Dissertation Research: How does groundwater contamination influence citizen-state relationships?

大多数人口依赖地下水作为饮用水源。因此，地下水污染威胁着全球饮用水安全。PFAS（全氟烷基和多氟烷基物质）是一种已确定的令人关注的污染物，它污染了地下水等环境资源，对人类健康造成不利影响。该项目的重点是PFAS污染的地下水，以了解用户，政府官员和其他利益相关者如何管理和应对地下水中PFAS对井水获取造成的危害和不确定性。该项目加深了我们对公民如何看待水毒性的理解，并调查这些看法如何影响饮用水使用实践和参与补救工作。它帮助培训了一名文化和应用人类学博士生，并将其成果传播给学术和非学术受众，包括社区团体和决策者。该项目开发了一个新的理论框架，以了解社会关系和公民国家关系如何影响与地下水有关的风险和不确定性的看法。研究人员使用一套混合的方法，包括参与者观察和半结构化访谈，以及社区会议参与调查以下研究问题：1）PFAS污染如何影响不同利益相关者群体的饮用水修复工作？2)水井用户和国家机构如何看待和理解影响井水质量的受污染地下水，包括风险和不确定性？3)水井用户和国家机构如何应对影响井水质量的受污染地下水？这项研究的结果将有助于了解PFAS污染如何影响地下水管理，以及政府如何组织对PFAS的反应，以解决居民对井水使用和其他环境保护问题的担忧。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The majority of human populations rely on groundwater as a drinking water source. Groundwater contamination thus threatens global drinking water security. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) is an identified contaminant of concern that has polluted environmental resources such as groundwater, posing adverse human health effects. This project focuses on PFAS-contaminated groundwater to understand how well users, public officials, and other stakeholders manage and respond to the harm and uncertainty that PFAS in groundwater poses for well water access. This project deepens our understandings of how citizens perceive water toxicity, and investigates how those perceptions impact drinking water use practices and involvement in remediation efforts. It contributes to the training of a doctoral student in cultural and applied anthropology and its results disseminated to academic and non-academic audiences, including community groups and policymakers. The project develops a new theoretical framework to understand how social relationships and citizen-state relationships impact perceptions of risk and uncertainty in relation to groundwater. The investigators use a suite of mixed methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, and community meeting engagement to investigate the following research questions: 1) How is PFAS contamination shaping drinking water remediation efforts across different stakeholder groups? 2) How do well users and state agents perceive and understand contaminated groundwater that affects well water quality, including in terms of risk and uncertainty? 3) How do well users and state agents respond to contaminated groundwater that affects well water quality? Results from this research will help to understand how PFAS contamination is impacting groundwater management and how government response to PFAS is organized to address residential concerns about well water use and other environmental protection concerns. It contributes to scientific cultural anthropological theories surrounding citizen-state relationships and relationships among individuals and their environments.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.