Are We All Flint? by Catherine Fennell
[This article originally appeared in Limn, Issue No. 7, “Public Infrastructures / Infrastructural Publics”.] For the past several decades, Flint, Michigan, has staggered under waves of de…
Tag: toxicity
Are We All Flint? by Catherine Fennell
[This article originally appeared in Limn, Issue No. 7, “Public Infrastructures / Infrastructural Publics”.] For the past several decades, Flint, Michigan, has staggered under waves of de…
How toxic flame retardant chemicals become-and stay-ubiquitous in our homes and bodies
A new report highlights the failure of Canadian federal regulations to keep harmful flame retardant chemicals out of homes and consumer products. In fact, it argues that current…
On Solidarity and Molecules (#MakeMuskratRight)
Deferring to molecules rather than social movements when it comes to contamination is a case of power relations.
Ethnographic Refusal: A How to Guide
Refusal is a method whereby researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy. Here are some strategies for identifying…
A Bibliography for Teaching Flint
This bibliography is designed for professors who want to “teach Flint” in their classrooms. The Flint, Michigan water crisis is an extreme but quintessential case study that shows…
Drawing the Invisible: An interview with the illustrator for the Radiation Monitoring Project
Communicating invisible threats is an area of interest in discard studies because it requires distilling and articulating the ideas that matter most in our concepts of contamination and…
Thompson on Sills, ‘Toxic War: The Story of Agent Orange’
The use of the defoliant Agent Orange by the United States is one of the most controversial actions of the Vietnam War. InToxic War: The Story of Agent…
CFP: Ambient Matter: Sensorial Engagements with a Toxic World (AAA)
CALL FOR PAPERS American Anthropological Association Meetings Minneapolis, MN. November 16-20, 2016 Panel title: Ambient Matter: Sensorial Engagements with a Toxic World Panel abstract: An anthropolog…
Refusal as Research Method in Discard Studies
Ethnographic refusal is a practice by which researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy. Its purpose is not…
Toxic Symposium on Exposure, Entanglement, and Endurance: A Summary in Tweets
Toxics: A Symposium on Exposure, Entanglement, and Endurance was heralded as “the most important conversation on body burdens yet.” See the Twitter version of that conversation here.
New book alert: Mining and Communities in Northern Canada
Mining, as the human activity responsible for some of the planet’s most dramatic landscape transformations and the largest proportion of total industrial waste flows, is a particularly salient…
Piping as poison: the Flint water crisis and America’s toxic infrastructure
Over the past few decades, we have met with much success in curbing some of Americans’ exposure to lead. Yet they have struggled to contain this continuing danger…
Article Alert! Redefining pollution and action: The matter of plastics
From the specific case of marine plastics, Liboiron’s paper offers a more general point that those of us who study discards need to remember to take seriously: How…
Article Alert! Legitimating the environmental injustices of war: toxic exposures and media silence in Iraq and Afghanistan
Along with Shiloh Krupar’s Hot Spotter’s Report: Military Fables of Toxic Waste, Bond’s article adds to a growing literature on the environmental effects of military discard practices.
DDT’s long shadow: Long-banned chemicals linked to abnormal sperm
A study of men from the Faroe Islands finds that high DDT and PCB exposure during adolescence and adulthood is associated with abnormal chromosomes in sperm. By Brian…
Roundtable reviews of “Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology”
If you’re interested in the history of pesticides and toxicology, Banned provides a detail-oriented, close reading of key 20th century experiments, legislative hearings, events, and texts to investiga…
The Power Behind Disposability: Why New York City’s ban on polystyrene was vilified, sued, and reversed
On July 1 New York City banned disposable Styrofoam containers. First they were sued over the decision, and last week the ban was overturned. What is the big…
Toxic Politics: A Collection of Research Projects
The global economy produces pervasive contaminants, harmful pollutants, damaging particles, and poisonous atmospheres, which are inescapably part of everyday life, though the harms and benefits are un…
LA’s Shade Balls: The ecological costs of plastics in water
Putting 20,000 black plastic balls in water after people have been warned against throwing plastic into waterways has sparked a number of questions. Our plastic expert talks about…
Article Alert! Attuning to the Chemosphere: Domestic Formaldehyde, Bodily Reasoning, and the Chemical Sublime
“”During the first hour spent in houses with suspected indoor air-quality issues, I would slowly develop an ache in the back of my eyes, which would with time…
Designing for the Future at Giant Mine
How do you communicate permanent pollution and toxicity to future generations? We held workshops with community members in Yellowknife and Dettah to make models about they would communicate…