Article ID: CBB552521359

Technological Solutions and Contested Interpretations of Scientific Results: Risk Assessment of Diesel Emissions in the United States and in West Germany, 1977–1995 (December 2020)

unapi

This article traces the different classifications of diesel emissions either as “safe” or as “hazardous” in the US and in West Germany between 1977 and 1995. It argues that the environmental regulation of diesel emissions was a political threshold. It contributes to our general understanding of how politicians, environmental lobbyists, scientists, and engineers constructed the standards and norms that defined the “safe” limit of environmental pollutants. After discussing how diesel emissions came under review as a potential carcinogen, I will show that the coding as “safe” or as “hazardous” resulted from negotiations that were entirely dependent on the temporal, geographical, and intellectual contexts in which diesel technology, scientific research on their emissions, and political regulation were embedded. In particular, I trace the differences in German and US regulatory policy. While US regulation relied more on epidemiology that provided only weak data on the carcinogenicity of diesel particulates in the early 1980s, German government agencies tended to base their policy around the mid-1980s more on the results of animal tests and shortly afterwards also on epidemiology. Furthermore, the article reveals how US and German automakers tried to foster doubt on the carcinogenicity of diesel emissions and how their approaches differed and shifted. Thereby, it sheds light on the triangular relationship between technology, science, and politics in regulatory processes by analyzing the different roles of the state, automakers, scientists, and environmental agencies in Germany and in the United States.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB552521359/

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Authors & Contributors
Katrin Jordan
Leonie Dendler
Troia, Matthew M.
Halvorson, Charles
Gaby-Fleur Böl
Johnson, Nick
Concepts
Regulation
Cross-national comparison
Science and society
Environmental pollution
Risk assessment
Science and politics
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
United States
Germany
Great Britain
France
Europe
Canada
Institutions
United States Navy
United States. Environmental Protection Agency
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