Power and Pollution: The Social History of Lead, Silica and Plastics in Post War America

SES 99-11127 - David Rosner (Columbia University) & Gerald Markowitz (John Jay College, CUNY)

'Power and Pollution: The Social History of Lead, Silica, and Plastics in Post War America'

This award supports the PIs as they study the cultural, political, and scientific relationships that 'frame' our understanding of occupational and environmental health through an analysis of the recent history of three industrial substances -- silica, polyvinyl chloride (a plastic) and lead. These materials are ubiquitous in the American environment and are often presented as essential to the creation of modern American affluence. Yet, public health officials, scientists, government regulators, insurance companies, industry, labor, environmental activists, economists, political scientists and historians all have different perspectives about how to measure the 'value' of these basic ingredients, especially when their role as causes of disease are factored in. A close examination of the social, regulatory, scientific and political histories of these substances will clarify the interplay among the philosophical ideas, political power and economic realities that underlie the conflicts over policy.

Together, the PIs argue, these three substances encapsulate important aspects of the history of the relationship between occupational and environmental health in the post-war period. During this period, we have seen conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and union activists, economists and political scientists contend over the best ways to address the impact of underground and air pollution, water quality, smokestack emissions, smog, and the like. This study explores these different groups' perspectives as they have shaped, through negotiation and contention, the medical, scientific and technical definitions of disease and responsibility for risk. While clearly an immense and complex history, the PIs argue that by focusing on these three substances, they will be better able to understand the broad scope of the relationship between environmental and occupational history. By looking at their political, public health, and regulatory histories, it is possible to begin to understand the complex relationship between traditional definitions of environmental and occupational danger. Such an approach also challenges traditional conceptions that there are defined 'boundaries' between occupational and environmental concerns. They maintain that it is critical for scientists, engineers, and scholars to understand the specific historical circumstances that led to new conceptualizations of the intersections of occupational and environmental hazards and the ways that American culture defined, categorized, and negotiated illnesses created by industrial production. The PIS plan to complete a book for the University of California Press that will attract the attention of historians of public policy, historians of public health, labor historians, and policy makers.