Citizen Science as/in Public Works: How Validating a Low Cost Air Monitoring Tool in a Sewage Treatment Plant Transformed its Metrics and Impact

• In Event: Citizen Science, Law and Policy - I

Abstract

Community science calls for research methods that produce actionable data and help prevent further harm to communities. Numeric assessments of environmental exposures developed in laboratories can make harms more imperceptible by focusing attention on regulatory thresholds. How can STS research develop and introduce different standards for harm?
By validating a citizen science method for visualizing the neurotoxic gas Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) in a sewage treatment plant rather than a laboratory, we developed a new comparative benchmark useful in advocacy. To validate the use of photographic paper to map H2S, air-monitoring experts advising the project stressed the importance of laboratory testing. This presented practical and theoretical challenges: no lab would run a 10-day experiment with continuously produced H2S because of its risks and rotten-egg stink. Looking outside of the artifactual structure of the lab to local sources of H2S led us to a municipal sewage treatment plant. We reflect on the surprises that emerged through researching within the city’s technological-bowels, and center on an unanticipated experimental result: we could now compare community exposures not just to concentrations of H2S and corrosion, but also to the average level in an environment where the gas is recognized and regulated as hazard.
Through two community case studies, we show how this institutional benchmark helped produce actionable data that has in local ways contributed to reducing harms. Connecting citizen science to existing public infrastructures such as sewage treatment plants, we explore how to reinvigorate Public Works for collaborative and civic uses.

Authors

• Sara Wylie, Northeastern University

• Garance Malivel, York University

• Lourdes Annette Vera, Northeastern University