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Routine exposure: social practices and environmental health risks in the home

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Abstract

The post-war introduction of new chemicals to consumer products created a range of complex environmental health issues. Despite recent evidence demonstrating the issues associated with using particular chemicals in the home, responses from industry and regulators have failed to account for the complex ways that chemicals interact with each other, humans and microorganisms to cause harm. This paper draws together the scientific and social science literature to make two key contributions: first, it demonstrates why investigating everyday practices will be crucial to improve knowledge of how human/environment interactions in the home are contributing to certain health conditions; second, it draws on examples of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals to show how these health conditions cannot be addressed by replacing individual products, or chemicals, as many toxic ingredients have become central to the functionality of interdependent networks of products, and the routines they enable. By failing to engage with these issues, future research and planning to establish healthy homes will not be able to account for these crucial sources of harm. We conclude that further research addressing indoor environmental health should expand the boundaries of inquiry across disciplines and knowledge perspectives to analyse how social practices structure micro-scale interactions between humans, microbes and chemicals, in the home.

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Notes

  1. The European Union’s REACH (Registration Evaluation Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) framework proposes to shift this ‘burden of proof’ to chemical manufactures and the industries that use them however, its capacity to protect people and the environment is from the vast array of chemicals in use is still unknown** Scruggs et al. (2014).

  2. Chemists refer to identical molecular entities as ‘chemical species’.

  3. Following Warde (2005), consumption is not understood to mean shopping, but the process by which items are appropriated in the course of engaging in particular practices. Consumption is therefore considered to be a dispersed practice that occurs often, on many different sites, rather than a practice in and of itself.

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Wakefield-Rann, R., Fam, D. & Stewart, S. Routine exposure: social practices and environmental health risks in the home. Soc Theory Health 18, 299–316 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-018-00084-8

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