Risk, chemicals, and justice

How ‘risk’ and ‘harm’ are defined is always political. That is, these categories do not exist outside in the world but are defined by particular groups of people– scientists, government regulatory boards, public health authorities– who always have preconceived and culturally informed ideas about what it means to be healthy or ‘at risk’.

Inevitably Toxic (2018) Edited by Brinda Sarathy, Vivien Hamilton., & Janet F. Brodie. University of Pittsburgh Press.

That categories of risk and health are not inevitable but historically and socially produced is the subject of Inevitably Toxic: Historical Perspectives on Contamination, Exposure and Expertise a new edited collection out of University of Pittsburgh press. The collection contains essays on a range of topics from x-rays to nuclear waste storage to pesticide use and oil drilling.

It also includes an essay I wrote as part of my previous research on waste in Arctic Canada.  My chapter ‘On Sovereignty, Deficits and Dump Fires: Risk Governance in an Arctic ‘Dumpcano” discusses the controversy of a summer-long dump fire in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Public protests, led by Inuit, reframed what would otherwise be seen as a single, exceptional, catastrophic event, as an effect of ongoing settler colonialism in Nunavut Territory. You can read the chapter, here.

For further reading about contamination, research, and expertise, I’ve also written the following short pieces:

• Against Risk Perception, Discard Studies, 1 October 2018
• When Your Research is Attacked, Discard Studies 24 January 2019
• Queering Chemicals (EDCs), Discard Studies, 15 April 2019

From ‘Queering Chemicals’. Image of plants titled ‘Sperm, Egg, Fertilization, Sex Cell‘ Creative Commons Zero – CC0 1.0, Public Domain.

 

Queer Science has Ethics; Silver Hake (and many fish!) Don’t Eat Plastic

Since starting my PhD in 2016, one of my favourite groups I’ve been a part of has been the Queer Science Reading Group. The group is comprised of a fantastic bunch of undergrads, graduate students, staff, and faculty from fields spanning anatomy and cell biology to geography to gender studies to medicine. We meet twice a month, drink tea, and learn about queer theory. In a, dare I say it, ~fabulous~ interview with Lady Science, group members Elise Earles (she/her) and I talk about what we’ve learned so far through the Queer Science Reading Group.  Topics covered include doing queer placed-based science in Newfoundland, opportunities and incommensurabilities between settler and Indigenous queer activism, queer food webs, queer quant, our reading list, and more. Check out the interview, here:  “Categories aren’t these things that are just there”: An interview with the CLEAR Lab’s Queer Science Reading Group’. The group will start up again in a new iteration this January. E-mail me if you’d like to join!

We’re making a manifesto! Preliminary thoughts from members Elise, Nic, Taylor, Ignace, Jackie, Caitlynn, Marie, and I.  Photo: Alex Zahara

Another CLEAR project that was recently published is the study, ‘A zero percent plastic ingestion rate by silver hake (Merluccius bilinearis) from the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada’, which is out now in Marine Pollution Bulletin. After not finding any plastics in silver hake off the coast of Newfoundland, we compared our results to the literature. We found that 41% of all recorded plastic ingestion rates for fish reported a value of zero.  Despite the ubiquity of plastics in the ocean, this is not surprising given that where pollution goes, who and what it effects is always unevenly distributed (i.e. in this case, an effect of where plastics are located, how they float, where fish swim, what fish like to eat).  Given low sample sizes reported in the literature, we are unable to determine what fish are most effected by plastic pollution– what is necessary for justice-based interventions. The key takeaways of the paper: (1) studies with higher sample sizes for a single fish type are important for understanding the effects of plastic pollution; and (2) report your null results!

A rainbow of microplastics on Kamilo Beach, Hawai’i. Photo: Alex Zahara, 2012.

You can read more about the study and it’s implications in the piece, ‘Not All Marine Fish Eat Plastics’ published on the Conversation by co-author Dr. Max Liboiron.

Full Citations:

Elise Earls & Alex Zahara (interviewer, KJ Shephard) (2018).  “Categories aren’t these things that are just there”: An interview with the CLEAR Lab’s Queer Science Reading Group’. Lady Science.

F. Liboiron, J. Ammendolia., J. Saturno., J. Melvin., A. Zahara., N. Richard., and M. Liboiron. (2018). A zero percent plastic ingestion rate by silver hake (Merluccius bilinearis) from the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Marine Pollution Bulletin 131: 267-275.