Scientific contestations over “toxic trespass”: health and regulatory implications of chemical biomonitoring

Abstract

Biomonitoring has chronicled hundreds of synthetic chemicals in human bodies. With the proliferation of biomonitoring studies from diverse stakeholders comes the need to better understand the public health consequences of synthetic chemical exposures. Fundamental disagreements among scientific experts as to the nature and purpose of biomonitoring data guide our investigation in this paper. We examine interpretations of biomonitoring evidence through interviews with 42 expert scientists from industry, environmental health and justice movement organizations (EHJM), academia, and regulatory agencies and through participant observation in scientific meetings where biomonitoring evidence is under debate. Both social movements and industry stakeholders frame the meaning of scientific data in ways that advance their own interests. EHJM scientists argue that biomonitoring data demonstrates involuntary Btoxic trespass^and underscores a policy failure that allows for the pervasive use of untested chemicals. Industry scientists seek to subsume biomonitoring data under existing regulatory risk assessment paradigms. Our analysis reveals one area of convergence (validity of Centers for Disease Control surveillance data) and seven areas of contestation regarding the scientific, public health, and policy implications of biomonitoring evidence, among regulatory, industry, and EHJM scientists including: chemical presence in bodies, biological mechanisms of health impact, use of biomonitoring equivalents, limits of targeted biomonitoring, limits of detection, policy influence of advocacy biomonitoring, and relevance of biomonitoring to motivate policy change. These areas of scientific contestation provide insight into the persistent challenges of regulating chemicals even in the midst of mounting evidence of widespread exposure to multiple compounds with implications for human health.

Lead and Arsenic in Shed Deciduous Teeth of Children Living Near a Lead-Acid Battery Smelter

“…19 This biomarker further offers the opportunity to conduct retrospective exposure studies in a community-driven method. 56 Among participants, we identified soil Pb concentrations as an important predictor of teeth Pb levels. Legacy Pb contamination accumulated in soil may play an important role for in utero exposures, suggesting remediation of soil Pb contamination is a key step to lessen Pb transmission between mothers and babies.…”

Challenging dominant breast cancer research agendas: perspectives on the outcomes of the interagency breast cancer and environment research coordinating committee

“…Social science scholarship has long identified the tensions in efforts to establish scientific consensus, noting that scientific deliberations always contain underlying assumptions and potentially conflicting frames [24]. Silvia Tesh writes that “firmly but often unconsciously held answers” to questions such as “what is the legitimate source of knowledge,” fundamentally “guide scientists, policy makers, and ordinary citizens alike to different constellations of facts about the causes of disease and, hence, to different preferences for prevention policy”[25].…”

“…The strength of scientific evidence is a contentious issue in the field of breast cancer prevention research, policy, and advocacy. For example, in their research on expert interpretations of biomonitoring data, Shamasunder and Morello-Frosch note the long-standing dispute between environmental health and justice movement advocates, industry, and regulators over how data on chemical exposures, hazard assessments, and cumulative effects should be integrated into chemical regulation [24]. These disputes often fall along the lines of how to evaluate data from lab-based animal studies vs. human epidemiology or exposure studies.…”

“…These disputes often fall along the lines of how to evaluate data from lab-based animal studies vs. human epidemiology or exposure studies. Industry and regulators typically emphasize quantitative probability estimates of health effects, stressing, “the importance of risk-based responses that quantify the probability of individual and population harm from chemical exposures” [24]. Interviews revealed disagreement over the types and quantity of evidence pertaining to environmental causes of breast cancer.…”

A Collaborative Approach to Assess Legacy Pollution in Communities Near a Lead–Acid Battery Smelter: The “Truth Fairy” Project

“…As a result, the burden of scientific proof of environmental harm falls on affected communities, not polluters. Biomonitoring, or body burden research, involves the assessment for the presence and concentration of chemicals in humans by measuring the chemical (or its derivative) in the human body (Paustenbach & Galbraith, 2006) and has been leveraged as a tool of social justice organizations to document the presence and extent of chemicals not normally present in human bodies (Shamasunder & Morello-Frosch, 2016).…”