Toxic Environments, Toxic Bodies

TOXIC ENVIRONMENTS, TOXIC BODIES WORKSHOP

March 2, 2007 Sheraton Hotel, Baton Rouge, LA

Room: Iberville B

On Friday, March 2, 2007, the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) will host a special interdisciplinary workshop at our Baton Rouge meeting titled “Toxic Environments, Toxic Bodies.” The workshop will open with a morning of roundtable discussions among environmental scientists, historians, and social scientists. The workshop will ask: what do scientists, historians, social scientists, and affected communities have to offer each other in our quest to understand and respond to toxic chemicals in our bodies?

New technologies and methods for the detection of toxins, particularly endocrine disruptors, have drawn increasing attention toward the pervasive and persistent presence of synthetic chemicals in our lives. Some of these tests, such as biomonitoring and body burden analyses, highlight that we not only experience our environment in very obvious ways, but that we are also united with it at the molecular level. Trace chemicals found in the air, water, and soil are now been being detected within us. The very chemical composition of our bodies is being altered in ways that reflect the transformations of our everyday environments. Chemicals occupy a position along the border between the ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ worlds. Industrial chemicals, in particular, prove difficult to categorize. They are abundant artifacts of an industrial society brought into being within a highly specific cultural infrastructure, against a backdrop of human evolution that occurred without their presence. And yet, increasingly they are a part of the natural world – and as persistent chemicals, many of them will continue to be a part of the world far into the future, beyond the point of remembering their origins as artificial or synthetic.

8:30 – 8:40 Welcome Remarks, Nancy Langston, Chairperson

8:40 – 10:00 Roundtable: On the Edge of Uncertainty: Biomonitoring, Body Burden, and New 21^st Century Bodies

• Jody Roberts, Historian, Chemical Heritage Foundation

• John McLachlan, Environmental scientist, Tulane University

• Sarah Vogel, Historian, Columbia University

• Tyrone Hayes, Environmental scientist, University of California Berkeley

• Arthur Daemmrich, Chemical Heritage Foundation

10:00 – 10:20 Break

10:20 – 11:40 Roundtable: Communities, Historians, and Scientists: Environmental Justice and Responsibility

• Scott Frickel, Sociologist, Tulane University

• Pete Myers, Environmental Health Sciences, Virginia

• Linda Nash, Historian, University of Washington

• Wilma Subra, Environmental scientist and activist

• Michelle Murphy, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

• Barbara Allen, Science and Technology Studies, Virginia Tech

11:40 – 12:00 Discussion led by Michael Egan, Historian