Realities of environmental toxicity and their ramifications for community engagement

Our plain-English summary of Realities of environmental toxicity and their ramifications for community engagement, by J.T. Clapp, J.A. Roberts, B. Dahlberg, et al (Social Science & Medicine, 2016).

The study

• Authors: J.T. Clapp, J.A. Roberts, B. Dahlberg, L.S. Berry, L.M. Jacobs, E.A. Emmett, F.K. Barg
• Journal: Social Science & Medicine
• Published: 2016;170:143-151
• Cited by: 12 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

Abstract

Research on community responses to environmental toxicity has richly described the struggles of citizens to identify unrecognized toxins, collect their own environmental health facts, and use them to lobby authorities for recognition and remediation. Much of this literature is based on an empiricist premise: it is concerned with exploring differences in how laypeople and experts perceive what is presumed to be a singular toxic reality that preexists these varying perspectives. Here, we seek to reexamine this topic by shifting the focus from facts to facticity-that is, by exploring the many types of knowledge that communities develop about toxicity and how these knowledges articulate with the ideas of scientific and governmental authorities about what kinds of information are valid bases for policymaking. In making this shift, we are influenced by work in semiotic anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), which emphasizes that lived experience generates distinct realities rather than different perceptions of the same underlying state. Using this framework, we present an analysis of oral history interviews conducted in 2013-14 in the small American town of Ambler, Pennsylvania. Part of Ambler's legacy as a nineteenth- and twentieth-century center of asbestos manufacture is that it is home to two massive asbestos-containing waste sites, one of which was being remediated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the time of this study. Our interviews demonstrate that even asbestos, a toxin with a well-established public narrative, is a fundamentally different object for different members of the Ambler community. For many of these individuals, the epistemology and practices of the EPA are incongruent with or tangential to their toxicity-related experiences and their consequent concerns for the future. As such, our findings suggest caution in framing the community engagement efforts of environmental health agencies primarily as facilitations of citizen science; this approach does not acknowledge the multiplicity of toxic realities.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In plain English

This was a qualitative social science study. It did not measure asbestos exposure or disease. In 2013 and 2014 the authors held oral history interviews about Ambler, Pennsylvania, a former asbestos manufacturing town with two large asbestos-containing waste sites. They spoke with 20 current or former residents of the area and 3 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees. They found that population-level risk assessments were often inapplicable to residents' lived experiences. Long-term residents expressed resignation about their risk of asbestos-related disease. The two oldest interviewees, men who had played on the waste piles as children, saw the piles as less urgent a hazard than many newer residents did. Residents who spoke of keeping asbestos contained preferred capping the BoRit site over removing the waste. Interviewees did not frequently challenge the EPA on technical grounds, though some activists successfully pushed it to do more air and water sampling. All residents interviewed questioned non-technical aspects of the EPA's behavior. The West Ambler residents interviewed worried that labeling their neighborhood 'risky' was leading toward displacement of long-term residents. The authors concluded that community engagement framed mainly as citizen science does not acknowledge this range of concerns.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Qualitative study based on open-ended oral history interviews, with transcripts coded and analyzed by the research team; purposive sampling
• Who was studied: 23 people: 20 current or former residents of Ambler, Pennsylvania, USA, or the surrounding area, and 3 EPA employees involved in the Ambler asbestos remediation; interviews conducted November 2013 to September 2014
• Exposure: Living near two large asbestos-containing waste sites (the 'White Mountains' and BoRit) left by Ambler's asbestos factories, which operated from the 1880s until the 1970s; no fiber types or doses were studied
• Main results:
  • Among resident interviewees, scientific and policy risk assessments were often inapplicable to their lived experiences of environmental toxicity
  • Several interviewees had known or heard of people in Ambler with illnesses possibly related to asbestos
  • Long-term residents expressed resignation about their risk of developing an asbestos-related disease
  • The two oldest interviewees, men who played on the asbestos waste piles as children, considered the piles less of an urgent hazard than many newer residents did
  • Interviewees who used containment metaphors for asbestos preferred capping the BoRit site with the waste in place over removing it
  • Interviewees did not frequently challenge the EPA on technical grounds
  • A portion of interviewees, described as activists, engaged with the EPA in technical terms and successfully pushed it to do more air and water sampling
  • All residents interviewed questioned aspects of the EPA's behavior not directly related to the science of risk mitigation
  • All West Ambler residents interviewed worried that labeling their neighborhood 'risky' was leading toward displacement of long-term residents. West Ambler is a heavily African-American neighborhood situated closest to the BoRit waste.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that their research cautions against an uncritical celebration of the EPA's and other agencies' greater responsiveness to citizen science. In their view, framing engagement mainly as citizen science does not acknowledge the multiplicity of residents' experiences and concerns.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • An interview gives only a very compressed account of the experiences that shape people's views
  • How interviewees describe past experiences is inevitably influenced by more recent events in their lives

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