The Niagara Labyrinth — The Human Ecology of Producing Organochlorine Chemicals

Organochlorine chemical production, by United States chemical manufacturers, has resulted in severe contamination of the Niagara River, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence River and of Canadian resources by transboundary pollution. In 1978, Canada and the United States signed the second Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement which was designed to overcome toxic chemical as well as eutrophication problems. This paper is a review of the effectiveness of the implementation of the provisions of the 1978 Agreement concerning toxic chemicals. To aid with organization of the material the sociological framework of human ecology has been employed. To focus the discussion on the more important facets, the critical pathway analysis methodology, developed for radiation protection, has been used.

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Toxic Chemical Governance Failure in the United States: Key Lessons and Paths Forward

BioScience ◽

10.1093/biosci/biz065 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 69 (8) ◽

pp. 615-630 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Ariana M Chiapella ◽

Zbigniew J Grabowski ◽

Mary Ann Rozance ◽

Ashlie D Denton ◽

Manar A Alattar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Policy Design ◽

The United States ◽

Toxic Chemicals ◽

Toxic Chemical ◽

Social Actors ◽

Path Dependencies ◽

Production Policy ◽

Monitoring And Enforcement ◽

Over 40 Years

AbstractOver 40 years of regulations in the United States have failed to protect human and environmental health. We contend that these failures result from the flawed governance over the continued production, use, and disposal of toxic chemicals. To address this failure, we need to identify the broader social, political, and technological processes producing, knowing, and regulating toxic chemicals, collectively referred to as toxic chemical governance. To do so, we create a conceptual framework covering five key domains of governance: knowledge production, policy design, monitoring and enforcement, evaluation, and adjudication. Within each domain, social actors of varying power negotiate what constitutes acceptable risk, creating longer-term path dependencies in how they are addressed (or not). Using existing literature and five case studies, we discuss four paths for improving governance: evolving paradigms of harm, addressing bias in the knowledge base, making governance more equitable, and overcoming path dependency.

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