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The Bahía Blanca Petrochemical Complex: Why I Have Made a Documentary Called “Ingeniero White: A Town They Are Killing”

María Giovis. In October 2017, the documentary “Ingeniero White: Un pueblo que están matando” was released, a documentary marked by an urgency to denounce. To denounce how they are killing my hometown: Ingeniero White. To me, this is the place of my earliest affections, dirt roads, the smell of the sea, beloved friends and family. … Continue reading The Bahía Blanca Petrochemical Complex: Why I Have Made a Documentary Called “Ingeniero White: A Town They Are Killing”

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How Small Data and Toxic Autobiographies Unearth the Limitations of the Italian Legislation on Industrial Risk: First Results from Gela, a Sicilian Petrochemical Town

Elisa Privitera, University of Catania. A General Overlook: Regulations about Risk, Democracy, and Socio-Environmental Injustice Catastrophic events have been direct and indirect triggers of policy changes concerning the assessment and mitigation of risk.[1] The Seveso Directives, which represent the main European laws on industrial risk, are an emblematic case since they were issued after the … Continue reading How Small Data and Toxic Autobiographies Unearth the Limitations of the Italian Legislation on Industrial Risk: First Results from Gela, a Sicilian Petrochemical Town

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Researching the Politics of Risk in Grangemouth and Ludwigshafen: Looking back to 2001

Peter Phillimore, Newcastle University. What led us nearly twenty years ago (in 2001) to undertake comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two centres renowned as hubs of the European chemical and petrochemical industry – Ludwigshafen in Germany, and Grangemouth in Scotland? What were the conversations and questions which led to this project? Our primary aim was to … Continue reading Researching the Politics of Risk in Grangemouth and Ludwigshafen: Looking back to 2001

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Afterlives of Orbital Infrastructures: From the Earth’s High Orbits to its High Seas

Rajji Desai, Harvard University. “We live in an age in which extremely expensive machines are made and installed in orbit without public knowledge, only to be spectacularly blown away and become total losses before our eyes.”  – Lisa Parks, “Orbital Ruins” (2013) As of 2019, the global space industry generates approximately 350 billion US dollars in revenue … Continue reading Afterlives of Orbital Infrastructures: From the Earth’s High Orbits to its High Seas

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Editorial: Environmental Justice in the Global South: Uneven Geographies of Extractivism, Industrial Pollution and Toxicity

David Brown, University of Warwick The environmental justice paradigm has its origins in the United States in the 1980s, as a social movement which aimed to tackle the uneven distribution of toxic waste sites and polluting industries located in minority and socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods. Much of the early environmental justice research focused efforts on issues, … Continue reading Editorial: Environmental Justice in the Global South: Uneven Geographies of Extractivism, Industrial Pollution and Toxicity

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The Global Petrochemical Map: Drawing the Political-Spatial Nexus of Petrochemical Production

David Brown and Lorenzo Feltrin, University of Warwick Introducing the Global Petrochemical Map In July this year, the Toxic Expertise team launched the pilot version of The Global Petrochemical Map. This public resource is a collaborative project that seeks to make petrochemical connections around the globe visible and to show the commonalities and differences in … Continue reading The Global Petrochemical Map: Drawing the Political-Spatial Nexus of Petrochemical Production

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‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Petrochemical, Fossil Fuel, and related Industries’: The 2019 Toxic Expertise Annual Workshop

David Brown, University of Warwick On May 30th and 31st, the fourth annual Toxic Expertise workshop took place at the Arden Conference Centre, University of Warwick. The two-day event involved contributions from 20 scholars from multiple disciplines, backgrounds and perspectives. Entitled ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Petrochemical, Fossil Fuel, and related Industries’, the workshop brought together scholars … Continue reading ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Petrochemical, Fossil Fuel, and related Industries’: The 2019 Toxic Expertise Annual Workshop

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Fighting fossil fuels in South Africa, campaigners invoke the spectre of climate chaos

Patrick Bond, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg  South Africa is one of the most difficult places to combat fossil fuels, including the petrochemical complexes that regularly poison the third largest city, Durban, founded by white settlers on the east coast in the mid-19th century. The average South African emits 9 tons of … Continue reading Fighting fossil fuels in South Africa, campaigners invoke the spectre of climate chaos

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Beyond Containment: Toxic Justice and Space-Time Violence in the Ruhr

Laurie Parsons, Royal Holloway, University of London Toxic fashion is having a moment. Or rather, with modish transience, it had one. 2018 saw a huge spike in interest in the social and environmental cost of seasonally disposable clothing. From the dyes used in manufacturing them, to the burning of garment offcuts by brick workers in … Continue reading Beyond Containment: Toxic Justice and Space-Time Violence in the Ruhr

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The Peruvian oil company Petroperu uses fear and bribery to silence local people and prevent environmental justice

Adrian Gonzalez, University of York adrian.gonzalez.2013@live.rhul.ac.uk; Twitter: @AGonzalez05 Imagine you and your family suffering from the effects of oil pollution and feeling powerless to report it and seek justice. My research shows that this is the situation that rural Peruvian communities face today. Two villages in Peru’s Amazon region of Loreto have both been affected … Continue reading The Peruvian oil company Petroperu uses fear and bribery to silence local people and prevent environmental justice