Legal and political claims about environmental chemicals typically address such substances on a molecule-by-molecule basis. This article argues that this approach is not determined solely by the nature of chemicals. Rather, it is the product of legal structures, administrative procedures, regulatory lists, information systems, and nomenclature conventions, which I collectively term “molecular bureaucracy.” This article traces the development of molecular bureaucracy, a global framework of environmental governance grounded in American regulatory infrastructure, and its political and environmental consequences. It does so by following the history of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, synthetic chemicals in widespread use since the 1950s whose toxicity has become a prominent subject of research and public concern since the late 1990s. Molecular bureaucracy originated in a classification system based on molecular identity developed to make chemical information accessible to the late nineteenth-century synthetic chemicals industry. It came to structure environmental law and politics through, first, the efforts of 1960s US policy-makers to render toxic hazards subject to government control through computer-based information coordination and, second, a vision of chemical holism within the nascent US Environmental Protection Agency and the Toxic Substances Control Act, which sought to accommodate the global environment to rational administration by aggregating diverse toxic hazards and reframing them as abstract chemical substances. The history of molecular bureaucracy offers valuable insights for present-day efforts to ground toxic substances scholarship and politics in alternative conceptions of environmental chemicals.
...More
Article
Fortun, Kim;
(2004)
From Bhopal to the Informating of Environmentalism: Risk Communication in Historical Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB000750333/)
Article
Langston, Nancy;
(January 2018)
DOCUMERICA and the Power of Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB114442000/)
Article
Mark A. Murphy;
(2020)
Early Industrial Roots of Green Chemistry - II: International “Pollution Prevention” Efforts During the 1970’s and 1980’s
(/isis/citation/CBB097070257/)
Book
James V. Hillegas-Elting;
(2018)
Speaking for the River: Confronting Pollution on the Willamette, 1920s-1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB486173762/)
Book
David Demortain;
(2020)
The Science of Bureaucracy: Risk Decision-Making and the US Environmental Protection Agency
(/isis/citation/CBB170498113/)
Book
Richard S. Newman;
(2016)
Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB272782783/)
Article
Nash, Linda;
(2004)
The Fruits of Ill-Health: Pesticides and Workers' Bodies in Post-World War II California
(/isis/citation/CBB000750328/)
Article
Jennie L Durant;
(October 2020)
Ignorance loops: How non-knowledge about bee-toxic agrochemicals is iteratively produced
(/isis/citation/CBB459611870/)
Book
Collin, Robert W.;
(2005)
The Environmental Protection Agency: Cleaning Up America's Act
(/isis/citation/CBB000700829/)
Article
Hoffman, Karen;
(2013)
Unheeded Science: Taking Precaution out of Toxic Water Pollutants Policy
(/isis/citation/CBB001320662/)
Book
Charles Halvorson;
(2021)
Valuing Clean Air: The EPA and the Economics of Environmental Protection
(/isis/citation/CBB488007911/)
Thesis
Ashenmiller, Joshua Ross;
(2004)
The National Environmental Policy Act in the Green Decade, 1969--1981
(/isis/citation/CBB001560815/)
Chapter
Torny, Didier;
(2013)
Managing an Everlastingly Polluted World: Food Policies and Community Health Actions in the French West Indies
(/isis/citation/CBB001420175/)
Thesis
Alexis J. Abboud;
(2018)
A Biography of Endocrine Disruptors: The Narrative Surrounding the Appearance and Regulation of a New Category of Toxic Substances
(/isis/citation/CBB313774069/)
Book
Boudia, Soraya;
Jas, Nathalie;
(2013)
Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001420169/)
Article
Lave, Rebecca;
Doyle, Martin;
Robertson, Morgan;
(2010)
Privatizing Stream Restoration in the US
(/isis/citation/CBB001034682/)
Book
Pittman, Craig;
(2010)
Manatee Insanity: Inside the War over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species
(/isis/citation/CBB001023337/)
Thesis
Bevington, Douglas;
(2007)
The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism and the New ConservationMovement, 1989--2004
(/isis/citation/CBB001561545/)
Chapter
Thompson, Charis;
(2004)
Co-Producing CITES and the African Elephant
(/isis/citation/CBB000470170/)
Thesis
Tribbett, Krystal L.;
(2014)
Reclaiming Air, Redefining Democracy: A History of the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, Environmental Justice, and Risk, 1960 -- Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001567631/)
Be the first to comment!