Individual Health Status as Environmental Privilege: The Case of Fragrances in the Workplace

• In Event: 254 - Section on Environment and Technology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 14. Environmental Justice

Abstract

This paper focuses on employees in a large non-industrial workplace that has implemented a fragrance-free policy within the past five years. It examines employee reactions to a policy that requests behavioral changes based on claims that everyday consumption of fragranced products is harmful to employee health. Incorporating the construct of contested illnesses (Brown, Kroll-Smith, & Gunter, 2000; Phillimore, Moffatt, Hudson, & Downey, 2000; Shriver & Webb, 2009), this paper expands on the concept of environmental privilege (e.g. Gould, Pellow, & Schnaiberg, 2008; Park & Pellow, 2011) to include individual health status as a measure of privilege. Health status, in this case the measure of whether one identifies as being negatively impacted by fragrance chemicals, is a form of environmental privilege because it is associated with awareness, or lack thereof, of the potential harms associated with fragrance chemicals. Understanding how health status works as a form of environmental privilege may provide a key entry point to increasing environmental awareness and action in terms of toxics in everyday consumption.

Author

• Monique Y. Ouimette, Boston College