Apprehension as a Way to Understand the Regulation and Perception of Residues

• In Event: Residues: Rethinking Chemical Environments - III

Abstract

This communication considers residue as matter out of reason, using apprehension to guide our analysis. Apprehension refers to human capacities to perceive and make sense of residues as part of our physical environment. It also refers to the emotional and moral character of residues as invoking danger. The material reality of residue challenges our systems of reason-making, especially those involving markets, science, and politics. In exploring the double meaning of apprehension, understanding and worries, we first examine how biomonitoring data has prompted scientists, officials, social movements, and the public at large to reckon with the scale and ubiquity of low-level chemical contaminants. Our second example looks at regulatory apprehension, drawing on occupational exposure limits used to regulate exposure to chemicals at the workplace. An ethnography of the EU Scientific Committee on Exposure Limits in charge of producing those values (SCOEL) illustrates the distance between the scientific work of experts to develop sophisticated regulatory tools and the often irregular implementation of these tools by others. The third example centers on the globally used herbicide glyphosate. What strikes us most here is the divergence in usage, and apprehension of environmental and health effects, in places as different as Sri Lanka, Argentina and Europe. In the final analysis we situate the apprehension of residues in the material, political, and scientific conditions that have been developing over the past five decades.

Authors

• Carsten Reinhardt, University of Bielefeld

• Angela Creager, Princeton University

• Emmanuel Henry, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL University

• Nathalie Jas, French National Institute for Agronomical Research (INRA)