"But I Know It's True": Environmental Risk Assessment, Justice, and Anthropology

Title"But I Know It's True": Environmental Risk Assessment, Justice, and Anthropology
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2007
AuthorsChecker, Melissa
JournalHuman Organization
Volume66
Issue2
Pagination112-124
Abstract

Few social issues depend as heavily on scientific information as environmental problems. Yet activists, governmental officials, corporate entities, and even scientists agree that much of the science behind environmental risk assessments is controversial and uncertain. Using a low-income African-American neighborhood as a primary case example, this paper illustrates in concrete terms how environmental risk assessments can exclude the experiences of the poor and people of color. Further, race and class experiences intensify a community's susceptibility to, and perceptions of, risk. These experiences and perceptions underpin the ways that communities contest scientific biases in everyday practice. After discussing alternative approaches to contemporary risk assessment that combine ethnographic research with other kinds of scientific expertise, I conclude by offering a four-fold model for resolving some of the problems raised by this essay. This model draws upon multiple kinds of knowledge bases and includes research, advocacy, policy recommendations, and theoretical innovation.

Notes

'Cross-cultural comparison of \"risk\" and \"justice\" in Hyde Park\n \n- Environmental problems depend heavily on science, but the science of environmental risk assessments (ERAs) is characterized by uncertainty and controversy\n- ERAs often exclude experiences of POC and poor people\n- Environmental risk *and* perceptions of risk are often intensified by race and class\n \nChecker proposes some ways that ethnography might contribute to environmental risk assessments and environmental health policy. Checker also suggests that the ethnographic insights gleaned from these examples of how an ERA excludes the experiences of poor, African American residents in a Georgia neighborhood also point to theoretical innovations for anthropology and applied ethnographic research.\nCiting Haenn 2003, notes that \"Similarly, environmental risks include anarray of social categories—health, justice, science, and community—all of which are culturally contingent and sociallyconstructed (Haenn 2003)\" (113)\nResidents question why environmental regulatory agencies \"are unable to correlate the high levels of contaminants with high local rates of certain illnesses\" when they \"know it\'s true\" that these contaminants are harming their community (112-113)\nEnvironmental science is unable to establish the proof of causation that regulators and the law rely upon in deciding whether to address the demands of environmental justice groups and their communities, so \"scientific methods and procedures are for some people, a matter of \'life and death\'\" (113)\n \n\"In particular, much important work has beendone on how different societies (especially on a national level)perceive, categorize, and prioritize risk. Fewer anthropologists,however, have entered debates over risk-assessmentmethodologies and practices.\"\nFindings:  \"I first illustrate how risk assessments often fail to account for the experiences of poor people and people of color. Second, I show how, aside from varying internationally, risk perceptions also vary intranationally, according to socioeconomic factors. More specifically, I contend that race and class experiences intensify a community members’ susceptibility to risk and their risk perceptions. By demonstrating how such experiences underpin the ways communities contest environmental science, I illustrate the cultural contingency of conceptions of environmental justice.\" (113)\n \nMain arguments/ implications:\n- Anthropologists should facilitate EJ groups in developing better environmental risk assessments (113)\n    - this includes combining scientific and lay assessments of risk (120)\n    - important that the identification of risk is also combined with \"risk reversal\" (Cernea 2000)\n    - Ethnography particularly suited to this for its ability to elicit a diversity of perspectives in order to understand the multiplicity of risk\n    - CBPR and/or studying up\n- Scholars should also \"theorize new paradigms that obviate the need for risk assessments and find alternative, realizable avenues for an environmentally just society\" (113)\n-\n \n \n \n \n \nKC: Cf. PROXIMAL/DISTAL\nHazards and endpoints: \"Hazards identification determines whether a particularsubstance causes a disease or other adverse health effect. Generally, hazard identification focuses on one health effect at a time, called an “endpoint.” Endpoints can include cancer, reproductive and developmental disorders, central nervous system symptoms, trauma, infections, and rashes (Israel 1995:483).\" (115\nUncertainty in the process of risk/hazard assessment: Risk assessment starts in the lab. Many sources of uncertainty:\n1) dose response tested on a very small number of animals, then extrapolated to humans\n2) chemical sensitivities vary widely\n3) lab rodents are genetically similar, very uniform pool\nMoreover, in assessing dose response and extrapolating,  using healthy white male workers as a standard (e.g. fish intake)\n\"In other words, standard comparison techniques fail to provide information on the range of ways women, children, elderly, or already sick people—far more susceptible subgroups—might react to a chemical\" (115)\n4) hazards are studied in labs rather than environments where they\'re disposed of\n5) high dose studies concentrate on immediate, rather than long-term effects\n\"Thus, it is difficult to estimate a chemical’s potential for harm without studying it over long periods of time (Fitchen 1988). In sum, although scientists might be able to establish cause and effect relationships between one chemical and one disease under controlled conditions, the chances of establishing definitive cause and effect relationships in the real world are slim (Montague 2003).\" (115)\n \nAnother problem is then exposure assessment - how do you know what you\'ve been exposed to?\nRisk assessment tends not to include the multiple exposures residents face. And moreover, scientists are barely beginning to understand cumulative risk. (116)\nMany health disorders, even if they don\'t originate in chemical exposure, are exacerbated by that exposure (e.g. hypertension and diabetes can inhibit processing toxic exposures)\n\"Despite all of the uncertainties and biases I have mentioned, our social valuations of science persistently overestimate its abilities to provide an objective resolution to issues like environmental risk assessment. In part, because capitalism underlies the production of scientific knowledge (especially in the area of hazards research), its accumulation is both materially and socially valued (Escobar 1994). Moreover, societies that place a high value on science see scientific knowledge as a one-way process, where information flows from scientists to passive recipients (Martin 1984).\" (116)\n \npp. 116-117 have a good description of how environmental science  is influenced by a variety of factors and is not neutral. See citations on risk and stuff\n\"Rather, as environmental justice activists frequently point out, science isembedded in power relations and subjective interests (Brulleland Pellow 2006:103). Questions about the neutrality of scienceare not new (Bryant 1995; Dove 2001; Franklin 1995;Haraway 1989, 1991; Janasoff et al. 1995; Nelkin 1987, 1992;Satterfield 1997). However, it is worth briefly revisiting thiswell-trod terrain to reiterate the degree to which environmentalscience, in particular, can be influenced and thus biasedby cultural, political, and economic factors\" (116)\n \nOn comparing risk assessments:\nSoil samples from topsoil and below:\n\"Here, activists recognized the limitations of scientific objectivity andaccuracy; yet they also recognized that science is often bestcontested on its own terms. By combining local knowledgewith scientific expertise, they believed that, at the very least,they could raise the level of the tests’ accuracy\" (117)\n \nHyde Park residents see their risk as multiple: racism, exclusion, invalidation, compounding toxic exposure. Mental health problems, developmental delays, asthma. Magnification of mistrust of science given history like Tuskegee. (118)\nAnd yet, environmental agencies deny community claims and don\'t solicit communit input.\n \nRemedies suggested:\nComparative risk has been used since late 1980s (see Finkel 1994 a and b). Hard data compares  quantifiable values like fatalities and size of the geographic area, and compares to cost. \"Soft\" data gives weight to both scienftific facts and qualitative data reflecting equity, etc. MAinly used for allocating govt resources.\n \nAlternatives to ERAs(119 -120):\n1) Precautionary Principle: burden of  proof reversed\n2) Autonomy paradigm - local knowledge and self determination of natural resource management (w EPA funding)\n \nWays anthropologists can contribute:\n- on-the ground assessments of multiple contexts for how people experience risk , and directing this to risk reversal (Cernea 2000)\n1) \"On the reform side, anthropologists can continue toadvocate for the expedited implementation of cumulativerisk assessment strategies. In other words, until federalofficials relinquish the idea of risk assessment, and whileenvironmental justice communities continue to reside in life-threatening conditions, anthropologists can work together with environmental scientists to develop more comprehensive and accurate assessments of risk. One means of doing this is to facilitate the pairing of scientific and lay expertise in developing risk assessments (Brown 1992, 1995; Brown and Mikkelsen 1997; Brullel and Pellow 2006; Clapp 2002; Dove 2001; Scoones 1999).\" (120)\n[[KC: Cf \"bioethnography\" (Roberts)]]\n \n2) CBPR\n \n3) working with each side to find some basis for negotiation and ocmpromise\n \n - kecox'

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