Chemical Unknowns: Preliminary Outline for an Environmental History of Fear

We live in a Toxic Century. While we cannot see it, each of us is a walking, breathing artifact of humanity's toxic trespasses into nature. Sociological findings suggest that toxic chemicals scare human beings in new and special ways. This has more to do with what we do not know about their danger than what we do know, and those unknowns strike at the epicentre of how fear is individually and culturally manifested. The method through which persistent organic pollutants assault human and environmental health, the manner in which they proliferated after World War n, and the unanticipated consequences of their spread are key characteristics of this new landscape of fear. Persistent organic pollutants contaminate rather than merely damage; their pollution penetrates human tissue indirectly rather than attacking the surface in a more straightforward manner; and the threat from exposure is not acute, but rather slow, chronic, and enduring. That we lack a full understanding of the hazards they pose and have little control over their environmental mobility distinguishes chemical toxins. As a result, a culture of fear associated with new toxins is an explicit and unmistakable feature of the post-World War n world. This paper examines the rise of toxic fear in the American 1980s, a decade punctuated by a series of environmental crises and explicit fears about chemical pollution, both within the United States and internationally. I examine the politics of uncertainty and point to the 1980s as a watershed moment in our contemporary understanding of toxic fear.