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Surveying the Chemical Anthropocene
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Researchers examined the concept of the 'Chemical Anthropocene,' exploring how toxic synthetic chemicals have become so pervasively embedded in daily life and social structures that harmful exposures often go unrecognized until significant damage has already occurred.
Faced with the non-optional acceptance of toxic chemical artifacts, the ubiquitous interweaving of chemicals in our social fabric oft en exists out of sight and out of mind. Yet, for many, toxic exposures signal life-changing or life-ending events, phantom threats that fail to appear as such until they become too late to mitigate. Assessments of toxicological risk consist of what Sheila Jasanoff calls “sociotechnical imaginaries,” arbitrations between calculated costs and benefits, known risks and scientifically wrought justifications of safety. Prevalent financial conflicts of interest and the socially determined hazards posed by chemical exposure suggest that chemical safety assessments and regulations are a form of postnormal science. Focusing on the histories of risk assessments of pesticides such as DDT, atrazine, PFAS, and glyphosate, this article critically reviews Michel Serres’s notion of “appropriation by contamination.”
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Researchers analyzed 25 environmental justice conflicts over PFAS contamination, finding that the invisible and persistent nature of these chemicals allows polluting industries to manufacture uncertainty and delay regulation, trapping affected communities in cycles of job dependency and property devaluation while exposing the Global South to expanding toxic risks.
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Researchers examined how middle-class Indians perceive and discuss chemical contamination from plastic packaging, finding that local cultural frameworks around bodily permeability and substance exchange shape how people understand and respond to chemotoxic risks from everyday plastics.
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This comprehensive review examines PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) contamination across food, water, and consumer products, highlighting their interconnection with microplastic pollution. The authors document decades of delayed regulatory action and cover-ups that have contributed to widespread human exposure. Evidence indicates long-term health effects from PFAS exposure, and the review calls for stronger risk assessment tools and policy responses to address this persistent chemical contamination.
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This sociological analysis examines how the choice of risk assessment framework — threshold-based versus persistence-based — shapes whether regulators act on microplastic pollution. Threshold approaches effectively permit continued industrial emissions because harmful concentrations in the environment are rarely reached, while persistence-based frameworks better justify precautionary action, making the choice of scientific method a deeply consequential regulatory and ethical decision.
Chemical Pollution of the Aquatic Environment and Health
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Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.