SOC433H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Environmental Epidemiology, Beatrice Foods, Environmental Health
Brown, Phil. 1992. "Popular Epidemiology and Toxic Waste Contamination: Lay and Professional
Ways of Knowing." Jrnl of Health and Social Behavior. 33, 3: 267-281
• this paper examines lay and professional ways of knowing about environmental health risks. Of
particular interest are differences between lay and professional groups' definitions of data quality,
methods of analysis, traditionally accepted levels of measurement and statistical significance, and
relations between scientific method and public policy
• popular epidemiology: the process by which lay persons gather data and direct and marshal the
knowledge and resources of experts in order to understand the epidemiology of disease, treat
existing and prevent future disease, and remove the responsible environmental contaminants.
• Based on different needs, goals, and methods, laypeople and professionals have conflicting
perspectives on how to investigate and interpret environmental health data.
• Professionals generally concern them- selves with disease processes, while laypeo- ple focus on
the personal experience of illness.
• For professionals, classes of disorders are central, while those who suffer the disorders dwell on
the individual level
• From the professional perspective, symptoms and diseases universally affect all
• lay perceptions and experience exhibit great cultural variation
• lay people use methods that professionals don’t really agree with
• lay perceptions of environmental health have manifested themselves in a burgeoning community
activism
• love canal case: the childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, has drawn attention to
the lay-professional gap.
o Woburn residents were startled beginning in 1972 to learn that their children were
contracting leukemia at exceedingly high rates
o community activists attempted to confirm the existence of a leukemia cluster and to link
it to industrial toxins that leached into their water supply
o led to a major community health study, a civil suit against W. R. Grace Chemical
Corporation and Beatrice Foods, and extensive national attention.
• discusses conflicts between lay and professional ways of knowing about environmental health
risks.
• The emphasis on ways of knowing makes sense because knowledge is often what is debated in
struggles to win ownership of a social problem
• community activists repeatedly differ with scientists and government officials on matters of
problem definition, study design, interpre- tation of findings, and policy applications
• emphasizes lay-professional differences con- cerning quality of data, methods of analysis,
traditionally accepted levels of measurement and statistical significance, and relations between
scientific method and public policy.
Study background
• used interviews with families, community activists, lawyers and official documents, public
meetings, and archival sources
• Traditional epidemiology studies the distri- bution of a disease or condition, and the factors that
influence this distribution
Lay ways of knowing
• Popular epidemiology:
• In some of its actions, popular epidemiology parallels scientific epidemiology, such as when
laypeople conduct community health surveys
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• Yet popular epidemiology is more than public participation in traditional epidemiology, since it
emphasizes social structural factors as part of the causal disease chain.
• it involves social movements, utilizes political and judicial approaches to remedies, and
challenges basic assumptions of traditional epidemiology, risk assessment, and public health
regulation
• traditional epidemiology may find similar results as traditional epidemiology but they may use
these results different, eg. Scientists won’t protest against the government once they get their
findings unlike lay people
• health advocacy can serve different purposes
o prevention and treatment of already recognized diseases
o win government and and medical recognition of unrecognized or underrecognized
diseases
o affirm the knowledge of yet unknown etiological factors in already recognized diseases
▪ most popular form
• a set of stages of citizen involvement. Participants do not necessarily complete a stage before
beginning the next,
• but one stage usually occurs before the next begins:
o 1) A group of people in a contaminated community notice separately both health effects
and pollutants.
o 2) These residents hypothesize something out of the ordinary, typically a connection
between health effects and pollutants.
o 3) Community residents share information, creating a common perspective.
o 4) Community residents, now a more cohesive group, read about, ask around, and talk to
government officials and scientific experts about the health effects and the putative
contaminants.
o 5) Residents organize groups to pursue their investigation.
o 6) Government agencies conduct official studies in response to community groups'
pressure. These studies usually find no association between contaminants and health
effects.
o 7) Community groups bring in their own experts to conduct a health study and to
investigate pollutant sources and pathways.
o 8) Community groups engage in litigation and confrontation.
o 9) Community groups press for corrobora- tion of their findings by official experts and
agencies.
• Lay observations of health effects and pollutants
• Many people who live at risk of toxic hazards have access to data otherwise inaccessible to
scientists. Their experiential knowledge usually precedes official and scientific awareness
• Knowledge of toxic hazards in communities and workplaces in the last two decades has often
stemmed from lay observation
• Woburn water had a long history of problems
• Hypothesizing connections
• where people hypothe- size that a higher than expected incidence of disease is due to toxics.
• Creating a common perspective:
• Trying to convince others about the matter
• The creation of a common perspective was aided by a few significant event
• Found animal carcinogens in the wells
• A resultant EPA study found dangerous levels of lead, arsenic, and chromium, yet EPA told
neither the town officials nor the public.
• The public only learned of this months later, from the local newspaper.
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