Public understanding of local lead contamination

Abstract

Residents of Herculaneum, Missouri have been influential in shaping the management of contamination challenges resulting from the community's proximity to the last primary lead processing plant in the United States. This paper provides a nuanced examination of two perspectives of resident activist groups involved in lead-related controversy in Herculaneum. Ethnographic data collection and storyline analysis were used to trace the evolution in local views from resembling an industrialist-environmentalist dichotomy to more compromising positions associated with ecological modernization. Implications for characterizing public environmental perspectives in the US as beginning to entertain certain aspects of the ecological modernist paradigm are discussed.

Science communication activism: Protesting Traditional Chinese Medicine in China

“…While the strength of the activists’ deficit-model science communication strategy stems from the fact that the Chinese government is committed to a nation-building strategy based on the increase of scientific literacy, it might prove weaker in dealing with the wider cultural and social contexts (McNew-Birren, 2014), in this case a nation-building strategy that is simultaneously celebrating ‘traditional excellent Chinese culture’. The official sanction of TCM treatment is not simply a question of scientific evidence, but also of praising a cultural trajectory.…”

“…Often, studies of scientific controversies have found the relationship between these two groups to be antagonistic (Nelkin, 1979). Civil society protests against GMO (genetically modified organism) have been global and spectacular (Bauer and Gaskell, 2002; Bloomfield and Doolin, 2012; Motion et al, 2015), but activists have also fought local waste facilities or contamination (Fan, 2012; McNew-Birren, 2014), nuclear weapons (Feigenbaum, 2015; Meyer, 1993) and vaccines (Dube et al, 2015; Reiss, 2017). Often, lay activists have been focused on mobilizing dissent and challenging the authority of science and scientific knowledge claims.…”

“…In addition, popularization strategies should also be seen in connection to wider social and economic issues and dynamics (McNew-Birren, 2014). It is obvious that TCM activism has to be understood in connection with the wider social and economic climate in China.…”

“Dioxins are the easiest topic to mention”: Resident activists’ construction of knowledge about low-level exposure to toxic chemicals

“…Other processes are in some ways similar with the ones described above, although it can be argued that there is a difference in regard to the question of initiative and the degree of discontent, concerns, and dispute from laypeople’s perspective. McNew-Birren (2013) studies “… interactions between expert and local knowledge in environmentally controversial contexts” (p. 3) with a focus on resident activists (p. 8), and Tytler et al (2001) use the notion of public involvement to describe the dispute about the emission of the chemical compounds in an analysis of processes in a village. In the latter case, an action group of residents made good use of scientists who were involved in the epidemiological examinations of whether the low-level exposure could be measured.…”

“…In the part of the research that deals with studies concerning contamination of an area, it is argued by Fowlkes and Miller (1987) that the Love Canal dispute was characterized by a heterogeneous group of residents divided into two opposing sub-groups holding different perspectives on the contamination. McNew-Birren (2013) similarly questions the traditional division between laypeople and experts, and Tytler et al (2001) describe internal disagreements in a resident action group and point to the fact that doctors and the industry disagree as well on a number of questions concerning the controversy. The argument is that residents are a heterogeneous group and that the division between “a science role” and “a public role” is not useful (p. 353).…”