Invisible Exiles: The Hidden Labor of the Chemically Sensitive

• In Event: 50620 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Embodied Environments and Environmental Agency

Abstract

Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is a contested environmental illness that can be debilitating and life limiting. Those with MCS develop an array of physical symptoms to doses of chemicals in everyday life that are currently considered safe for human health by scientific and political actors. I used interviews and embedded ethnography to better understand the lived experiences of those with MCS. How do they practice chemical avoidance and how does this avoidance impact their lives? In this piece I explore the labor (domestic, physical, and emotional) that goes into chemical avoidance and is displaced onto those with MCS due to inadequate structural and relational support. I am particularly interested in the ways this work is made invisible and obfuscated as work.

Author

• Isabella Clark, Colorado College