This chapter reveals how the environmental health movement came together to call for a broad application of a strong precautionary principle in environmental regulation, and worked hard to lobby for global and domestic policy change. As the movement presented evidence of widespread human exposure to environmental chemicals, it faced the question of how to help people understand how to contend with this exposure. Precautionary consumption was the answer. Organizations circulated a message that gendered environmental health risks in a way that understands women’s bodies as the primary pathway through which contamination enters fetal and infant bodies. Specifically, it is women’s domestic labor that provides a temporary solution to prevent contamination. Thus, this chapter tells the story of how the environmental health movement came to take a personalized and gendered approach, and why the movement is a significant part of the story behind the rise of precautionary consumption.
Household Decision Making and Valuation of Environmental Health Risks to Parents and Their Children
