Toxic Uncertainties and Epistemic Emergence: Understanding Pesticides and Health in Lao PDR

Abstract

Agrichemicals and other toxicants are now ubiquitous in both human bodies and the environment, yet public debate and scientific practice on their effects are still mired in uncertainty. Recent research in the history of science, feminist science, and technology studies has advanced ways of thinking about ignorance and uncertainty. Combined with key insights from political ecology, specifically the ontological continuity of bodies and environments and the uneven production of both knowledge and exposure, I suggest a conceptual intervention. I propose epistemic emergence—a way of thinking about the relations between forms of often situated, partial, and imperfect evidence that could be greater than the sum of their parts—as a way of working with uncertainty. Epistemic emergence pairs conventional scientific data with lay methods, takes into account the complex ecology in which exposures occur, considers how exposure interacts with social lives, and asks what forms of knowledge might make harm articulate enough for action (Liboiron 2015) in a particular context. Using a case study of community-based biomonitoring in upland Laos where pesticide use was near zero fifteen years ago and today risky levels of biomarkers for insecticide appear in children, I discuss what epistemic emergence might look like in practice.

农药等有毒物质在人体和环境中处处存在，然而对有毒物质危害的辩论和科学实践仍然陷在不确定性的困境中。近期的科学史、女权主义科学和技术研究中，采用了考量未知和不确定性的先进方法。结合政治生态学的主要观点，特别是人体和环境的本体延续性、知识和有毒物暴露的不均衡效果，本文提出了一个概念性的方法。本文建议采用认知突现（特定的、局部的和不完美的证据的各种形式的关联分析，其结果可能大于证据的简单叠加）来研究不确定性。认知突现将传统的科学数据和世俗方法相匹配，考虑了发生有毒物暴露的复杂生态环境，探究了有毒物暴露与社会生命的交互，回答了在特定场景下哪种知识形式对有毒物伤害的描述的清晰度能达到指导行动的水平。本文采用的案例是老挝一个山地社区的生物监测，该社区农药的使用在15年前几乎为零，而现在儿童身体里的杀虫剂含量已经达到危险水平。本文讨论了认知突现的应用。

Aunque los agroquímicos y otros tóxicos aparecen ahora ubicuos tanto en cuerpos humanos como en el medio ambiente, el debate público y la práctica científica sobre sus efectos son todavía mirados con incertidumbre. La investigación reciente sobre la historia de la ciencia, la ciencia feminista y los estudios sobre tecnología ha promovido modos de pensar acerca de la ignorancia y la incertidumbre. Combinada con visiones claves de la ecología política, específicamente la continuidad ontológica de cuerpos y entornos ambientales y la desigual producción de conocimiento y exposición, yo sugiero aquí una intervención conceptual. Propongo la emergencia epistémica ––una manera de pensar acerca de las relaciones entre las formas de evidencia a menudo situadas, parciales e imperfectas, que podrían ser más grandes que la suma de sus partes–– como una manera de trabajar con incertidumbre. La emergencia epistémica empareja los datos científicos convencionales con métodos laicos, toma en cuenta la compleja ecología en la que las exposiciones se dan, considera cómo interactúa la exposición con las vidas sociales e interroga qué formas de conocimiento podrían causar daño lo suficientemente articulado para la acción (Liboiron 2015) en un contexto particular. Usando un estudio de caso de biomonitoreo con base comunitaria en las tierras altas de Laos, donde el uso de pesticida fue cercano a cero hace quince años, y los niveles peligrosos de biomarcadores de insecticida que aparecen en niños en la actualidad, discuto cómo lucirá en la práctica la emergencia epistémica.

Key Words:

• pesticides
• political ecology of health
• science and technology studies
• uncertainty

关键词:

• 农药
• 健康政治生态学
• 科学和技术研究
• 不确定性

Palabras clave:

• ecología política de la salud
• estudios de ciencia y tecnología
• incertidumbre
• pesticidas

Acknowledgments

Becky Mansfield, Alastair Iles, Jake Kosek, Maywa Montenegro, and the Skagen III Workshop on Land and Environments all gave valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article. Mistakes and omissions are all mine.

Notes

1 The public debates on agrichemicals cover a tiny portion of the more than 10,000 pesticides that are still approved in the United States under “conditional registration”—pesticides for which companies promised to provide missing toxicological and environmental impact data in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s but never did (Iles 2018). Although these might (or might not) be adequately tested individually, they are seldom tested in terms of their “cocktail effect” (Meeker, Sathyanarayana, and Swan 2009).

2 Although the Agricultural Cohort Study has not found evidence to support a link between non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and glyphosate, other epidemiological studies have (Eriksson et al. 2008; Schinasi and Leon 2014).

3 I calculated this number based on the total pesticide use the Lao Ministry of Agriculture reported to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) for 2006—4.3metric tons (FAOSTAT 2019). The 2016 figure at the time of writing had not been reported to the UNFAO. I used the figure (136.247 metric tons) given in a public presentation by the director of the Regulatory Division for the Department of Agriculture (Souvandoune 2017).

4 The group chose to focus on organophosphates and carbamates because of their ubiquity and their relative technical legibility. Carbamates and organophosphates act on the nervous system and can be detected by the activity of the enzyme cholinesterase, which carries signals across nerve endings. Common herbicides, however, have no such inexpensive way of measuring their mark on the body in low doses.

5 I was not present to observe these tests and did not conduct or directly observe any biomonitoring with human subjects or collect data in schools directly. I interviewed practitioners about the process of testing and participated in public government and community meetings where the data were discussed. Data stripped of personally identifiable information that were gathered through these awareness-raising activities were shared with me after the fact.

6 Glyphosate is currently the subject of intense scientific controversy after the International Agency for Cancer Research declared it a likely carcinogen and the State of California followed suit. The European Union and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have reached opposite conclusions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annie Shattuck

ANNIE SHATTUCK is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research engages agrarian change, food politics, and rural health.