Deteriorating Relations: Environmental Deterioration of Materials and U.S. Global Environmental Management

• In Event: Pathologies of Materials: Environmental Histories of Material Decay and Its Management

Abstract

Under the imperative of lavish, yet economical use of raw materials during World War II, American scientists and engineers developed a science of materials deterioration to combat environmentally-induced decay of various materials. This paper traces the evolution of this science from the pre- to the postwar period as a mode of U.S. global environmental management. During the Pacific War, the U.S. military encountered the widespread problem of “tropical deterioration,” whereby virtually all equipment and materials swiftly rotted away under tropical conditions. Early efforts to curb tropical deterioration relied on biologists in the Department of Agriculture who had conducted prewar research on biological decomposers, especially fungi, in plant and forest products.

In the decades after the war, however, the science of materials deterioration gradually shifted its approach from the control of microbial decomposers to materials science and engineering. As is particularly salient with cellulosic materials, preventative measures based on biological control (e.g., fungicides) gave way to those based on fundamental knowledge of materials’ properties as well as physical and chemical mechanisms of their deterioration. This trend, furthermore, spurred the engineering of durable materials, synthetic and otherwise. This re-orientation in American materials deterioration science, I argue, unfolded as its purview expanded from the tropics to other increasingly “extreme” environments seen as more hostile to life: polar regions, deserts, the deep sea, and outer space. While deterioration prevention provided a fillip to the conservation of natural resources, it was a version of conservationism that also served U.S. postwar imperialism and extractivism by opening up these extreme environments as new frontiers. This paper concludes by considering the alternative vision of Ralph G. H. Siu, who brought Eastern philosophy and ecological sensibilities from his decomposition research to bear on his theory of science management that brushed against American expansionism.

Author

• Boyd Ruamcharoen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology