Using Indexical Design and Counter-Mapping to Collaboratively Ground the Hazards of Oil and Gas Extraction

• In Event: Tensions and Challenges for Environmental Citizen Science II: Expertise and the State

Abstract

Current regulatory threshold limit values and scientific protocols for mapping the neurotoxic pollutant hydrogen sulfide (H2S) emitted during oil and gas development do not effectively address the industry’s impacts on people and public spaces. Numerical data is commonly the final output of scientific environmental sensors, but sensing itself depends upon analog detection by some reactive medium or index. Our interdisciplinary team engages STS principles and Peirce’s concept of an indexical sign to bring instruments’ sensing elements to the foreground and thereby develop a more embodied approach to environmental health research. Like tire marks on a road, an indexical sign is created by and thus visually conveys an aspect of the object that it senses. Our team of social scientists, community organizers, and an exposure scientist experiment with “indexical design” by using photographic paper to map H2S. This tool consists of a strip of light-sensitive photopaper with a layer of silver gelatin that darkens when it reacts to H2S. The discolored photopaper strips are geotagged and mapped with open source software to identify industrial emission sources of H2S in relation to community members’ locations. As an index--the data in itself--the elemental composition of the photopaper can also be further investigated and validated by X-Ray diffraction technology. Based on feedback from participants of Town Hall meetings in oil and gas communities and an ethnographic analysis of the use of these photopaper maps, we examine whether an indexical approach to environmental science can better represent and communicate exposure experiences.

Authors

• Lourdes Annette Vera, Northeastern University

• Sara Wylie, Northeastern University

• Drew Michanowicz, Harvard School of Public Health