Science, socioenvironmental inequality, and childhood lead poisoning

Abstract

Studies of socioenvironmental inequality in the United States have focused primarily on adults as opposed to children, and they tend to neglect institutional conflicts over the production, dissemination, and encoding of scientific knowledge into policy‐relevant frameworks. Drawing from public‐health historical accounts, the medical literature on lead poisoning, the sociology of environmental conflicts, and studies of the production of scientific knowledge, this article addresses two questions: What is the sociopolitical basis of these conflicts? How did they affect the timing and capacity of national legislation to prevent lead poisoning from leaded gasoline? The article concludes by finding that environmental‐exposure studies shaped the definition of childhood lead poisoning as a national public‐health problem. By analyzing scientific‐knowledge production conflicts over the safety and health effects of leaded gasoline we can better understand the persistence of children's lead exposure as a basic socioenvironmental inequity.

Keywords:

• environmental policy
• inequality
• public health
• science knowledge claims
• toxic exposure