Locating the Boundaries of the Nuclear North: Arctic Biology, Contaminated Caribou, and the Problem of the Threshold (2021)
Luedee, Jonathan (Author)
Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 54
Issue: 1
Pages: 67-93
Publication date: 2021
Language: English
This essay is a historical–geographical account of how scientists and public health officials conceptualized and assessed northern radioactive exposures in the late 1950s and 1960s. The detection of radionuclides in caribou bodies in northern Canada both demonstrated the global reach of nuclear fallout and revealed the unevenness of toxic relations and radioactive exposures. Following the documentation of the lichen–caribou–human pathway of exposure, Canadian public health officials became increasingly concerned about the possibility of heightened radioactive exposures among Indigenous northerners. Between 1963 and 1969, scientists and officials with Canada’s Radiation Protection Division (RPD) coordinated an interdepartmental monitoring program through which they sought to determine whether the consumption of contaminated caribou meat had caused radioactive exposure levels in northern communities to exceed the officially recognized “safe limits.” In 1969, the northern monitoring program was suspended after officials determined that radionuclide body burdens had not exceeded the threshold for radioactive exposures. While the RPD emphasized its development of a technoscientific approach to measuring radioactive body burdens, the legitimacy of the monitoring program was linked directly to interdepartmental relations within Canada’s colonial northern administration. I situate the northern monitoring program within broader shifts in public health approaches to radiation protection and use Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of nuclearity to demonstrate how RPD officials employed the logic of the threshold in their assessment of radioactive exposures.
...MoreArticle Jacob Hamblin; Linda M. Richards (2021) Connecting to the Living History of Radiation Exposure. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 1-6).
Similar Citations
Article
Jennifer Fraser;
(2021)
Seizing the Means of Reproduction? Canada, Cancer Screening, and the Colonial History of the Cytopipette
Article
Sumiko Hatakeyama;
(2021)
Let Chromosomes Speak: The Cytogenetics Project at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC)
Book
Robert A. Jacobs;
(2022)
Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha
Article
M. X. Mitchell;
(2021)
The Cosmology of Evidence: Suffering, Science, and Biological Witness After Three Mile Island
Book
Chris Southcott;
Frances Abele;
Dave Natcher;
Brenda Parlee;
(2022)
Extractive Industry and the Sustainability of Canada's Arctic Communities
Article
Sörlin, Sverker;
(2014)
Circumpolar Science: Scandinavian Approaches to the Arctic and the North Atlantic, ca. 1920 to 1960
Thesis
Hay, Amy M.;
(2005)
Recipe for Disaster: Chemical Wastes, Community Activists, and Public Healthat Love Canal, 1945--2000
Thesis
Maria John;
(2017)
Sovereign Bodies: Urban Indigenous Health and the Politics of Self-determination in Seattle and Sydney, 1950–1980
Article
Rolf Sinclair;
(2018)
Astronomical Phenomena North of the Arctic Circle… and How People Respond to Them
Book
Dathan, Patricia Wendy;
(2012)
The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901--1977
Book
Brenda Parlee;
Ken J. Caine;
(2018)
When the caribou do not come : indigenous knowledge and adaptive management in the western Arctic
Book
John R. Bockstoce;
(2018)
White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic: The Fur Trade, Transportation, and Change in the Early Twentieth Century
Thesis
Emelin Elizabeth Miller;
(2019)
Empire of Ice: Arctic Natural History and British Visions of the North, 1500-1800
Book
William C. Wonders;
(2003)
Canada's Changing North
Book
Samir Shaheen-Hussain;
Katsi'tsakwas Ellen Gabriel;
Cindy Blackstock;
(2020)
Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada
Book
Jean Malaurie;
(2007)
Hummocks: Journeys and Inquiries Among the Canadian Inuit
Book
Markoosie Patsauq;
Valerie Henitiuk;
Marc-Antoine Mahieu;
(2021)
Uumajursiutik unaatuinnamut / Hunter with Harpoon / Chasseur au harpon
Article
Joan H. Fujimura;
Ramya M. Rajagopalan;
(2020)
Race, Ethnicity, Ancestry, and Genomics in Hawai‘i: Discourses and Practices
Article
Gregory P. Marchildon;
(2021)
Social Democratic Solidarity and the Welfare State: Health Care and Single-Tier Universality in Sweden and Canada
Article
Jill Campbell-Miller;
(2021)
The Proving Ground: Colombo Plan Fellowships and the Changing Landscape of Health Education in Canada, 1951–69
Be the first to comment!