Toxic Ignorance. How Regulatory Procedures and Industrial Knowledge Jeopardise the Risk Assessment of Chemicals

Abstract

Science and Technology Studies research has shown that processes of producing ignorance have been structurally embedded in the evaluation and regulation procedures of the tens of thousands of hazardous chemicals present on the market. What is the role of industrial actors, regulatory experts and scientific data in the institutionalisation of ignorance? Analysing two European expert panels demonstrates that institutionalised ignorance makes it difficult to justify and implement stringent regulations covering all types of population exposure. First, experts get caught up in ways of using scientific data that tend to reinforce industry’s influence on the production of regulatory knowledge (and ignorance). Second, several constraints press experts to play by the rules of the ‘regulatory science’ game, even if this undermines their capacity to challenge the dominant rules of expertise and the relevance of data. Third, the routine functioning of regulatory science tends to favour industry-sponsored studies, while obscuring other knowledge that could have been useful for regulation. Together, these pressures illustrate the concept of toxic ignorance, which weaves together research on institutionalised ignorance, the political economy of science and the social study of toxics. This concept provides a fruitful way of exploring how ignorance is enacted in the public assessment of chemicals, as well as in other instances where the toxic consequences are indirect.

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