Through the Smokescreen of Chemical Industry Discursive Strategies: Neutralizing the Impacts of Future PFAS Use in the European Union

• In Event: EUROC 11 Green Criminology: Public and perpetrator perceptions and rationalisations of environmental crime

Abstract

Neutralization techniques (Sykes & Matza, 1957) are central to understanding how a company rationalizes acts that traditional law considers criminogenic. Recent empirical research expands the application of neutralization techniques to corporate harms (Whyte 2016, Meesters and Behagel, 2017, Fooks et al., 2013). Boiral et al. (2022) applied the techniques in the chemical industry with a focus on toxic pesticides. However, no study has empirically applied neutralization techniques to examine whether chemical industry alliances or groups rationalize the need to continue producing and using toxic substances more than individual companies. To fill this lacuna, we analyze neutralization techniques mobilized by chemical industry actors (including alliances), to rationalize the proposed European Union (EU) regulation to ban all per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

The analysis is based on written communications between corporate representatives and three EU institutions, prior to January 2023, when the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden officially submitted the PFAS restriction proposal to the EU. We conduct a content analysis of 1111 EU documents, obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, covering the period 2020-2022.

Findings indicate that the chemical industry rationalized PFAS pollution through discursive strategies that: claim PFAS is essential, deny PFAS toxicity, deny the need to ban PFAS use, challenge the availability of effective substitutes, condemn the EU for stringent regulations, and appeal for interventions to protect the economy. The paper also assesses whether companies in a PFAS alliance or group, for instance, the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), rationalize the need for continued use of PFAS, more than individual companies. In so doing, we identified contextual factors that allowed PFAS corporate alliances to ambiguously drift between rationalizing the need for continued production of PFAS and abiding by established norms. We aim to contribute to the literature on the non-isomorphic and context-based nature of chemical industry neutralization techniques.

Authors

• Abby Muricho Onencan, Erasmus School of Law – Erasmus Initiative Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity

• Lieselot Bisschop, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Yogi Hendlin, Erasmus School of Philosophy