Collaborative Research Grant - Toxic Ignorance and the New Right-to-Know:The Implications of Biomonitoring for Regulatory Science

该项目由科学，技术和社会计划资助，研究生物监测技术如何重塑利益相关者对政府用于监管化学品的监管科学未来的斗争。具体来说，由于化学生物监测研究在政府、学术和环境健康倡导领域的广泛应用，研究人员分析了美国化学生物监测研究的监管、政策、行业、科学和法律的影响。“公民认识论”是用来作为理论基础，阐明如何通过监管科学过程和机构的生物监测知识索赔和争议。研究依赖于访谈、参与者观察、媒体和文件分析产生的数据，并调查以下主题：1）生物监测研究对环境卫生政策中的监管科学和知识生产的影响; 2）利益相关者是否以及如何（社区、工业、科学家、消费者，和环境倡导组织）参与有关生物监测的潜力和陷阱的辩论，这些监测可能会重新塑造监管决策和环境政策的格局; 3）工业界是否以及如何对生物监测证据作出反应，通过产品替代和减少有毒物质使用等战略改变其生产;以及4）生物监测是否以及如何改变有毒物质侵权案件中使用的证据和证明标准。生物监测可能会改变科学，监管，以及公众的关注，以改变环境健康科学的知识生产。该项目有助于社会学和科学技术研究，以研究政治背景如何塑造公民对化学物质对社区环境健康的影响的认识论。它还提供了一个工具，探索知识生产的条件下，新的不确定性，在社会运动，科学，政治经济学和公共政策的交叉点。公民认识论理论仍然不发达，特别是在监管科学如何与社区运动，政策制定，法律的系统和公司交叉方面。该项目通过调查生物监测辩论如何重塑这些其他领域来填补这一空白。该项目直接涉及广泛的关键政策和监管问题，包括公共卫生筛查和监督，社区知情权，有毒物质侵权诉讼，环境正义索赔，化学品政策，工业生产的公共监督和监管科学。研究小组的跨学科性将确保该项目产生新的概念和经验资源，以改善监管科学和环境卫生政策，特别是在化学品风险评估，标准制定和科学不确定性的处理，并在新的，审议和公众参与的监管制度和科学知识生产的形式的发展。

This project, funded by the Science, Technology, and Society Program, examines how biomonitoring technology is reshaping stakeholder struggles over the future of regulatory science that governments use to regulate chemicals. Specifically, the researchers analyze the regulatory, policy, industry, scientific, and legal implications of chemical biomonitoring research in the United States, due to its proliferation in the government, academic and environmental health advocacy arenas. "Civic epistemology" is used as the theoretical foundation for elucidating how knowledge claims regarding biomonitoring are made and contested through regulatory science processes and institutions. Research relies on data generated by interviews, participant observations, media and document analysis, and investigates the following themes: 1) the impacts of biomonitoring research on regulatory science and knowledge production in environmental health policy; 2) whether and how stakeholders (communities, industry, scientists, consumers, and environmental advocacy organizations) engage in debates about the potential and pitfalls of biomonitoring that may re-shape the landscape of regulatory decision-making and environmental policy; 3) whether and how industry has responded to biomonitoring evidence to change its production, through strategies such as product substitution and toxics use reduction; and 4) whether and how biomonitoring may be changing the evidence and standards of proof used in toxic tort cases.Biomonitoring could potentially shift the scientific, regulatory, and public gaze in ways that will transform knowledge production in the environmental health sciences. This project aids sociology and science and technology studies to examine how political context shapes civic epistemologies about the impact of chemical body burdens on community environmental health. It also provides a vehicle to explore knowledge production under conditions of novel uncertainty, at the intersection of social movements, science, political economy, and public policy. Civic epistemology theory remains underdeveloped, particularly in terms of how regulatory science intersects with community movements, policy-making, legal systems, and corporations. This project helps fill this gap by investigating how biomonitoring debates can reshape these other domains. This project is directly relevant to a broad range of critical policy and regulatory issues, including public health screening and surveillance, community right-to-know, toxic tort litigation, environmental justice claims, chemicals policy, public oversight of industrial production, and regulatory science. The interdisciplinarity of the research team will ensure that the project generates new conceptual and empirical resources for improving regulatory science and environmental health policy, specifically in chemical risk assessment, standard-setting and the treatment of scientific uncertainty, and in the development of new, deliberative, and publicly engaged regulatory regimes and forms of scientific knowledge production.