Persistent chemicals, persistent activism: scientific opportunity structures and social movement organizing on contamination by per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances

ABSTRACT

Engagement with science is a prominent feature for many social movements, yet the dimensions of that scientific engagement and bidirectional relationships between science and advocacy are incompletely theorized in social movement scholarship. While social movement scholarship has previously demonstrated the importance of external political and economic factors for social movement processes and efficacy, we show that the emergence and success of environmental health activism is also dependent on dynamic relationships between scientific evidence and lay demands for particular types of knowledge production and application. Despite decades of industrial production and widespread contamination, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were a politically obscure class of chemicals until a recent spike in attention from activist, regulatory, and scientific circles. Drawing from in-depth interviews with activists of PFAS-impacted communities, we develop the scientific opportunity concept to examine how activists create and mobilize scientific factors to support their goals, and how scientific factors, in turn, support the emergence of further activism. Dimensions of scientific opportunity include availability of funding streams, openness and receptivity of institutionalized scientific spaces, presence of collaborative or community-led research, methodological and technological advancements aligned with activist demands, availability of relevant scientific findings and datasets, and presence of prominent scientific allies. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our concept to a wide range of social movements addressing science and technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• activism
• scientific opportunity
• PFAS
• environmental health movements

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the PFAS Project Lab at Northeastern University and Laurel Schaider for feedback on earlier drafts. We express gratitude to all the PFAS activists who participated in interviews and who continue to advance knowledge and policy actions around this class of chemicals. We also appreciate the thoughtful feedback of three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers SES-1456897 and SES-2120510; and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences under grant number T32ES023679.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Liss Ohayon

Jennie Liss Ohayon is a Research Scientist at Silent Spring Institute, specializing in environmental policy and environmental justice. She researches the emergence of scientific and activist concerns around industrial chemicals with Northeastern’s PFAS Project Lab. Her academic work is published in Environmental Health, Environmental Research, American Journal of Public Health, PLoS, and Mobilization, and her opinion pieces have been published in The Hill, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times.

Alissa Cordner

Alissa Cordner is an associate professor and Paul Garrett Fellow at Whitman College. Her research focuses on environmental sociology, the sociology of risk and disasters, environmental health and justice, and public engagement in science and policy making, and she is the co-director of the PFAS Project Lab. She is the author of Toxic Safety: Flame Retardants, Chemical Controversies, and Environmental Health (2016, Columbia University Press) and co-author of The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life (2014, Paradigm Publishers).

Andrea Amico

Andrea Amico co-founded the PFAS activist group Testing for Pease. Her family was exposed to contaminated drinking water at Pease Tradeport and she has worked tirelessly since learning of the contamination in 2014 to raise awareness, push for answers, and advocate for action on this class of chemicals. She testified at the first ever Senate hearing on PFAS in 2018 and gave a TEDx talk titled “PFAS and a Mother’s Journey to Becoming A Clean Water Advocate” in 2019.

Phil Brown

Phil Brown is university distinguished professor of Sociology and Health Science at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute. He studies PFAS policy, activism, and governance. He directs an NIEHS T-32 training program, “Transdisciplinary Training at the Intersection of Environmental Health and Social Science,” and is part of Northeastern’s Superfund Research Program and Children’s Environmental Health Center. He is a recipient of the Leo G. Reeder Award in Medical Sociology and the Fred Buttel Award in Environmental Sociology.

Lauren Richter

Lauren Richter is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. She focuses on US regulatory frameworks and scientific knowledge/ignorance production to understand how inequality shapes pollution exposure and recourse. She has published in Environmental Sociology, Environmental Health, Environmental Science & Technology, Social Studies of Science, Organization & Environment, American Journal of Public Health and Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology.