Anthropogenic chemicals have become ubiquitous in the environment, raising significant concerns about the extent of our exposure and its effects on us. How serious is our predicament? How has this exposure altered who we are?

While the nature of chemical exposure makes it challenging to track, it is far from invisible. Instead, we should consider the various practices that make exposure to environmental chemicals and their effects (in)visible.

How, and with what effects, is exposure to chemicals made (in)visible?

the science of chemical disruption

Despite the proliferation of research on environmental chemicals, significant uncertainties remain about the risks posed to human health and wildlife. Because only a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of synthetic chemicals in existence have been properly assessed, and because many chemicals in consumer products are not identified by the manufacturer, the true extent of the exposure is yet to be revealed.

How many synthetic chemicals are there? Where do they come from? What are the exposures for humans and wildlife? What are their effects, both individually and in mixtures, during development and adulthood, and even across generations? What are their mechanisms of action? These are urgent questions that demand answers. Given the penetrability, mobility, and complex interactivity of chemicals, these problems remain largely unresolved.

Studying chemicals and their effects on human health and wildlife necessitates examining a plurality of interactive factors, including the net effects of chemical mixtures, tissue-specific responses, critical windows of exposure across the lifespan, complex dose–response relationships, and the intricate issues of epigenetic effects, which alter susceptibility to diseases both intra- and inter-generationally. In sum, chemical disruption is a complex, multilayered phenomenon that poses significant challenges, particularly in gathering comprehensive scientific evidence.

manufacturing doubt about chemical harms  

The immensely profitable chemical industry is increasingly encroaching upon scientific research. Chemical industry executives hire reputable experts to dispute the findings of independent researchers, manufacturing doubt about the harms of chemicals. Current legislation requires substantial evidence to ban or restrict chemicals suspected of causing harm, and this skepticism-mongering strategy pays off—chemical companies succeed in questioning the evidential basis of health hazards and ultimately manage to keep their products on the market.

chemical regulation

National and international legislative frameworks for the regulation of chemicals aim to ensure a high level of protection of human health and the environment. Such frameworks are developed and managed by national laws, national and international regulatory agencies, and international initiatives, agreements, and conventions. By defining policy elements, such as exposure or emission limits, and overseeing their enforcement, chemical regulators are just as influential as scientists, if not more so, in determining how the public perceives chemical pollution and its effects on the environment and human health. Under the currently existing neoliberal governance systems, however, regulatory decisions tend to be lax and industry-friendly, facilitating investment and economic growth instead of protecting public health and the environment. More often than not, decisions about the banning of chemical agents for use in industrial production are based on a utilitarian calculation of the potential benefits and harms, which exaggerates the social and economic benefits of toxic chemicals, while downplaying the suspected or known costs in terms of the health of humans, nonhuman organisms, and the environment.

Environmental justice researchers Reena Shadaan and Michelle Murphy refer to governance systems that justify the continued production of known toxins and acceptable health risks as ‘permission-to-pollute regulatory systems’, highlighting their links to structures of settler colonialism and racial capitalism.

The absence of irrefutable scientific evidence about chemical harms makes chemical regulation contestable. Conceptual frameworks for assessing causality between chemical exposure and adverse health outcomes often enable assessments that result in lax, industry-friendly regulatory decisions. It is challenging to hold chemical companies accountable when only a high probability—rather than a reasonable possibility—of adverse health outcomes warrants regulatory action, and when the evidence bar is set impossibly high relative to applicable scientific methodologies. Moreover, pre-existing structural inequalities are exacerbated when the burden of proof is placed on the victims of pollution rather than the perpetrators.

precautionary consumption 

Following uncertainty about the true extent of chemical damage, reinforced by industry-sponsored campaigns of denial and doubt, members of the public are encouraged to take preventive and protective action. Sociologist Norah MacKendrick introduced the term ‘precautionary consumption’ to describe the practice of reducing personal exposure to the chemicals found in everyday consumer products by making responsible and informed choices. As MacKendrick demonstrates, precautionary consumption shifts the responsibility for reducing toxic burdens away from manufacturers and distributors and places it upon individuals. However, these individualized tactics fail because chemicals are uncontainable and infiltrate the environment. Once released from multiple outlets, chemicals circulate through the ground, water, and air, eventually diffusing throughout the entire environment. Thus, a truly effective means of preventing wider exposure to chemicals is infeasible, even through expensive and onerous practices of shielding, filtering, and distancing that MacKendrick elaborates.

Individualized—and largely feminized—tactics for managing environmental toxicities have been critiqued by feminists for spreading the misguided belief that effective protection from ubiquitous chemicals is possible. Moreover, these tactics shift the focus from protecting the environment to protecting ourselves individually, making us less likely to engage in public debates about addressing chemical pollution through systemic changes in chemical manufacturing.

environmental activism

In contrast to the neoliberal approach, which suggests individual avoidance of chemicals, environmental activists advocate for structural changes and accountability on the part of those responsible. International environmental organizations like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth campaign for a toxic-free future, where hazardous chemicals are no longer produced, used, or dumped into the environment. Environmental activists emphasize the importance of holding chemical industry manufacturers and regulators accountable for the diverse impacts of toxic chemicals, particularly on communities directly affected, and call for decisive action to achieve a global environment free from toxins.

eco-normativity 

The advocacy for a toxic-free future, promoting the ban of harmful chemicals and the transition to safe and sustainable alternatives, is underpinned by problematic assumptions. Fantasies about a clean, chemical-free body, environment, and future foster anxieties about impurity, contamination, and pollution and are prone to what Giovanna Di Chiro terms ‘eco-normativity’—ableist and normative ideas harnessed by environmental discourse to conceptualize exposures and their effects.

This uncritical rhetoric, which labels bodies as ‘impure’, ‘unhealthy’, or ‘unnatural’, becomes particularly problematic in the context of chemicals affecting sexual and reproductive development and functions. Eco-normativity becomes eco-heterosexism once queer bodies and behaviors are put forth as the main evidentiary focus of documenting harms. Both popular media and studies concerned with effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on sexual and reproductive systems published in acclaimed scientific journals tend to use normative expressions and catchphrases such as ‘chemical castration’ and ‘gender-bending chemicals’, or describe animal physiology and behaviors as ‘feminized’, ‘homosexual’, or ‘transgender’. In so doing, they make chemical harms visible in ways that promote heterosexist and transphobic views.

damage-centered research

The impact of anthropogenic chemicals on human bodies has been labeled as a form of ‘chemical violence’. The portrayal of chemical violence is essential for developing effective resistance against it. However, the ways in which chemical harms are depicted can themselves become a source of violence. Eve Tuck, an Indigenous studies scholar, introduced the concept of ‘damage-centered research’, which refers to research that focuses on documenting pain, brokenness, and suffering to hold those in power accountable for the oppression they have inflicted. According to Tuck, the possible gains of research that describes people, communities, or environments as ‘toxic’, ‘polluted’, or ‘damaged’ do not warrant the cost of thinking about ourselves or others in reference to these terms. Tuck urges communities, researchers, and educators to reconsider how research is framed and conducted and to rethink how research findings could be used by, for, and with communities.

queer ecologies

Queer ecologies refer to ideas, practices, and sensibilities that acknowledge the richness, diversity, and complexity of the natural world. Pioneered as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, queer ecologies oppose generalizing and essentializing interpretations of nature from human assumptions, especially the heterosexist notions of nature that associate ‘natural’ with ‘heterosexual’. Queer ecological approach acknowledges that the effects of chemical substances encompass biochemical as well as sociocultural processes and tensions. Evaluating these effects thus requires critical attention to our complex more-than-human and socio-political relationships, including the pressing issues of informed consent, chemical violence, extractivism, consumerism, and complicity, all of which influence our becoming within the intertwined network of biochemically active molecules and unequal capitalist relations.

By rejecting the politics of purity and affirming polluted, injured, and vulnerable forms of being, queer ecologies recognize the potential of these forms to change and rearrange—to become someone else—together with and in spite of these substances. In this way, queer ecologies offer a critical yet hopeful vision of life with synthetic chemicals, forming an alternative to both normative ideas of ‘healthy’ and ‘clean’ bodies and environments.

community resistance

The burden of pollution is not evenly shared across society. People from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and certain racial and ethnic groups face higher exposure to pollutants and may experience more severe health impacts as a result. Disadvantaged workers suffer the consequences of occupational exposure, while communities located near chemical production and dumping sites are disproportionately affected by pollutants. This is particularly evident in Indigenous communities, where livelihoods depend on resource-rich Indigenous territories.

Policymakers and national or international organizations fail to take action due to a lack of interest or insufficient formal documentation of the damages. As a result, affected communities develop their own strategies to expose the reality of their situation and mitigate the effects of environmental violence, leveraging community-based resources to create tools and solutions for health protection, assessment, and healing.

environmental justice

Environmental justice plays a crucial role in the endeavor to improve and preserve a clean and healthy environment, particularly for communities of color who have historically been compelled to reside and labor in close proximity to sources of pollution. According to the definition of the Environmental Justice Movement, environmental justice essentially means that everyone—regardless of race, color, national origin, or income—has the right to the same environmental protections and benefits, as well as meaningful involvement in the policies that shape their communities.

In the realm of potentially harmful chemicals, environmental justice encompasses more than just combating unethical practices in the production, distribution, and disposal of toxic substances. It also involves ensuring an equitable redistribution of waste and toxins that currently exist within our environments. Instead of solely focusing on detoxifying bodies and cleaning up environments (essentially relocating toxicities elsewhere), environmental justice encourages us to confront the challenges directly and willingly accepting some responsibility for managing toxicity by taking some of the burden of toxicity ourselves.

decolonial feminist approach

‘Pollution is colonialism.’ This assertion by plastic pollution researcher and citizen scientist Max Liboiron forms the foundation of the decolonial feminist approach adopted in this exposition. Building on this basic idea and informed by intersectional perspectives, the decolonial feminist approach seeks a nuanced and layered understanding of the power matrix of overlapping oppressions. It critiques Western capitalist modernity for being not only androcentric, misogynist, and heterosexist but also intrinsically racist and Eurocentric, with ties to coloniality. This approach examines the possibilities of decolonizing uncaring, colonial relations.

To the extent that the normative imaginary of a toxic-free futurity promotes ableist and heterosexist renderings of this future, decolonial feminist research seeks to challenge such conceptualizations, looking to identify and study chemicals in ways that facilitate caring relationships. The goal of decolonial feminist toxic politics is to shift the understanding of toxicity away from fetishized evidentiary frameworks that focus on misbehaving molecules. Instead, it seeks to interpret toxicity in terms of power dynamics and justice. This approach also aims to diversify and enrich concepts of agency and action, acknowledging the complexities of living in a permanently polluted world.

This exposition aims to strengthen the decolonial feminist frameworks that may be used to understand chemical exposure through the development of the figuration of synthetic bodies and by proposing protocols for embodied and materially embedded research practices that affirm vulnerable and wounded forms of living with, and despite, the potentially harmful chemicals.

→ making chemical relations visible/perceptible using the protocols