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Our Chemical Selves

Our Chemical Selves

Gender, Toxics, and Environmental Health

Edited by Dayna Nadine Scott

Published by: University of British Columbia Press

Imprint: UBC Press

436 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm

Paperback
9780774828345
Published: July 2015

£34.00

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Hardcover
9780774828338
Published: February 2015

£79.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Chemicals found in homes, schools, and workplaces are having devastating consequences on human health and the environment. Our Chemical Selves examines the gender dynamics associated with these everyday toxic exposures. Written by leading researchers in science, law, and public policy, the chapters in Our Chemical Selves reveal that while exposures to chemicals are pervasive and widespread, people from low-income, racialized, and Indigenous communities face a far greater risk of exposure. At the same time, the risks associated with these exposures (and the burdens of managing them) rest disproportionately on the shoulders of women. This collection hones in on the "political economy of pollution" by critically examining the system that manufactures the chemicals and the social, political, and gender relations that enable harmful chemicals to continue being produced and consumed. It also demonstrates the urgent need to revise existing approaches to the regulation of toxics, including Canada's current Chemicals Management Plan.

Foreword: Water Is Life / Josephine Mandamin

Introduction: The Production of Pollution and Consumption of Chemicals in Canada / Dayna Nadine Scott, Lauren Rakowski, Laila Zahra Harris, and Troy Dixon

Part 1: "Consuming" Chemicals

1 Wonderings on Pollution and Women's Health / M. Ann Phillips

2 Protecting Ourselves from Chemicals: A Study of Gender and Precautionary Consumption / Norah MacKendrick

3 Sex and Gender in Canada's Chemicals Management Plan / Dayna Nadine Scott and Sarah Lewis

Part 2: Routes of Women's Exposures

4 Trace Chemicals on Tap: The Potential for Gendered Health Effects of Chronic Exposures via Drinking Water / Jyoti Phartiyal

5 Consuming "DNA as Chemicals" and Chemicals as Food / Bita Amani

6 Consuming Carcinogens: Women and Alcohol / Nancy Ross, Jean Morrison, Samantha Cukier, and Tasha Smith

Part 3: Hormones as the "Messengers of Gender"?

7 The Impact of Phthalates on Women's Reproductive Health / Maria P. Velez, Patricia Monnier, Warren G. Foster, and William D. Fraser

8 Plastics Recycling and Women's Reproductive Health / Aimée L. Ward and Annie Sasco

9 Xenoestrogens and Breast Cancer: Chemical Risk, Exposure, and Corporate Power / Sarah Young and Dugald Seely

Part 4: Consumption in the Production Process

10 Plastics Industry Workers and Breast Cancer Risk: Are We Heeding the Warnings? / Margaret M. Keith, James T. Brophy, Robert DeMatteo, Michael Gilbertson, Andrew E. Watterson, and Matthias Beck

11 Power and Control at the Production-Consumption Nexus: Migrant Women Farmworkers and Pesticides / Adrian A. Smith and Alexandra Stiver

Conclusion: Thinking about Thresholds, Literal and Figurative / Dayna Nadine Scott

Glossary; Index

Dayna Nadine Scott teaches administrative law, environmental law and justice, and risk regulation. Her research has focused on environmental justice activism, the regulation of pollution and toxic substances, gender and environmental heath, and feminist theory of the body. She is the director of the National Network on Environments and Women's Health.

Contributors: Bita Amani, Matthias Beck, James T. Brophy, Samantha Cukier, Robert Dematteo, Troy Dixon, Warren G. Foster, William Fraser, Michael Gilbertson, Laila Zahra Harris, Margaret M. Keith, Sarah Lewis, Norah MacKendrick, Josephine Mandamin, Patricia Monnier, Jean Morrision, Jyoti Phartiyal, M. Ann Phillips, Lauren Rakowski, Nancy Ross, Annie Sasco, Dugald Seeley, Adrian A. Smith, Tasha Smith, Alexandra Stiver, Maria P. Velez, Aimée L. Ward, Andrew E. Watterson, Sarah Young.

The book... provides a wide variety of scholarship on chemical threats from a feminist political economy perspective. It is particularly effective at arguing for both extended producer responsibility for potentially harmful substances and the precautionary principle as a policy adoption strategy when dealing with uncertainties in the science of chemical pollution. - Angela Cope (Health Tomorrow) Our Chemical Selves is a fascinating book that raises important questions about the impact of chemicals on women's health in Canada … This book should be read by environmental historians or anyone concerned with the impact of chemicals in our world. Not only do the contributors highlight important issues regarding women's health, but they offer useful solutions to change our collective indifference toward the intensification of chemicals in our world. - David Kinkela, State University of New York at Fredonia (Environmental History 22) The strength of this work lies in its success at bringing recent developments in science together with legal and policy analysis and recommendations. For anyone interested in women's environmental health issues, it is a must-read … This book will help to provide researchers, policy-makers and advocates with tools to understand and address links between social inequity, environmental health and gendered differences in chemical exposure and effects - Kaitlyn Mitchell (Herizons) [U]nique and valuable for its focus on gender and environmental justice. - M. Gochfeld (Choice)