Analyze

CIEL's report is the first I have encountered to attempt to give a comprehensive analysis of Formosa Plastics and its impact on communities. The report breaks down the corporation's story into several sections: its origins and convoluted corporate structure, its primary products and common health risks of production, documented legal violations, and environmental justice threats. Together, the 100-page document covers significant ground, yet is readable in under an hour. It includes key statistics that are understandable without extensive background. I believe this report, as a mode of communication, finds an outstanding balance between accessible language, analysis, brevity, and detail. Activists and researchers alike should strive for the same qualities in their knowledge-sharing strategies.

Given the vastness of Formosa Plastics' influence, there are many ways to tell its story to the world. As environmental justice activists and researchers, how do we describe a company and its negative impact when there is so much to say? Limited by time, word count, and the audience's attention span, we must decide what goes unsaid. As a result, we could write countless answers to the same question, "What is Formosa Plastics?"

In this published academic case study, I introduce Formosa Plastics through a local lens--specifically, through the eyes of a grandmother-turned-activist in the small town of Welcome, Louisiana. Her family's history with social justice activism, as well as the area's connection to centuries of slavery, make the environmental racism of Formosa Plastics' Sunshine Project especially salient. Although Formosa Plastics is a global force, telling its story on the microscale is an equally important perspective. After all, in Sharon Lavigne's eyes, her small town is her world. How many of these little worlds have Formosa Plastics destroyed as they wreak havoc across international borders?

I published this news article about a hunger strike against Formosa Plastics that occurred in Texas this fall. Despite the extremity of a 30-day hunger strike, the protesting tactic has not gained attention from national media outlets. At the time I published this article, two small environmental organizations had announced the beginning of the strike, but none continued to cover the event in the unfolding weeks. While activists are driven to take on dangerous protest tactics, little communication of these tactics has carried across mass media.

The article itself introduces Formosa Plastics through its reputation as a "serial offender" of environmental and workplace safety regulations. I list several statistics on legal fines that Formosa Plastics has accumulated overtime, using these quantities to demonstrate the scale of their harm to environmental and human health. An important limitation of this storytelling strategy, however, is that many of Formosa Plastics' actions go undocumented, and even when documented, do not lead to legal consequences. Furthermore, we should still strive to acknowledge the harms committed by Formosa Plastics that are technically within legal limits.

From discussions of how to best document virtual strikers, organizers concluded participants should submit images of themselves holding signs of their commitment to fasting for a day with Diane Wilson. The series of images, showing many people from different countries, could create a sense of solidarity despite physical distance. In addition, images can serve as a tool against FPG demonstrating that many people disapprove of the corporation's actions, despite not being present at the in-person rally. Can images, however, form the same level of solidarity or connection that an in-person interaction otherwise would?

During my thesis project, Tim has served as a collaborator and mentor while he studied data use among activists opposing Formosa Plastics Group (FPG). In addition to connecting me with activists and interview candidates, he also introduced me to a small network of American and Taiwanese students in Taiwan and the United States studying FPG. This community can share resources and knowledge to further our individual studies. Could this academic network serve as a parallel to the transnational activist alliances I am studying? Are the strengths and barriers of research alliances reminiscent of the strengths and barriers of activist alliances?

Linking messages of community pride with political opposition to intrusion by petrochemical companies has interesting implications for collaborations across communities. Does this message enable partnerships in other regions and nations, and what is its relationship to the not-in-my-backyard/NIMBY mentality? How may it be interpreted in differing cultural and language contexts? 

WHAT (& WHAT FOR): Lead is a metal often found in pipes, and in old paint (before it was banned in paint in the late 1970s). Before 1996, lead also found in vehicle fuel resulting in  soil contamination in many communities from both paint dust and vehicle pollution. 

HEALTH IMPACT: Lead is a neurotoxin and is known to have no safe blood lead level in children. 

Has been linked to:

1. Brain swelling, anemia, seizures, renal failure, reduced IQ, and ADHD

2. Damages brain development in children

3. Connected to behavioral problems like aggression and bullying, and internalizing problems such as depression and anxiety 

LOCAL IMPACT: Recent research in Santa Ana has shown that there is a disproportionately impact of solid lead contamination crisis on lower income, people of color communities. 

POSSIBLE RESPONSES: There are many ways to respond to lead contamination:

1. Providing special health care for children with high blood lead levels, and investigating possible sources of lead exposure in homes, daycares and school, playground, etc.

2. Implement strict housing policies where landlord and city housing officials are required to have lead inspections of homes for lead paint hazards (especially in low income, people of color communities)

3. Requiring a minimum reduction standard for lead paint in older homes 

4. Requiring blood lead level test as part of the routine check up for children (extremely important for children in low-income housing)

WHAT (& WHAT FOR): PFOAS are a group of large manufactured chemicals that are widely used in various everyday items. Often used in waterproof items and nonstick pans among other products.  They are used in a number of industrial processes. Improper disposal of the chemicals from industrial manufacturing has resulted in PFAS seeping down into the ground and into the water supply.  These chemicals are known to be forever chemicals that  do not degrade in the environment. 

HEALTH IMPACT: PFAS are known to be forever chemicals that cause weakened immune systems, increased cholesterol level, increased risk of testicular and kidney cancers, and decreased vaccine response in children. EPA has concluded that exposure to PFOA and PFOS over certain levels may result in developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy (low birth weight) or breastfed infants (accelerated puberty, skeletal variations). 

LOCAL IMPACT: Both the State Water Board and the Santa Ana Water Board have initiated investigations. The PFAS investigation done by State of California Regional Water Quality Control Board reveals results that show PFAS concentrations above the current Notification Levels for drinking water. Santa Ana Water Board staff is currently working to identify potential sources of the contamination in the groundwater. 

POSSIBLE RESPONSES: 

1. Conduct wellhead treatment to treat PFAS impacted drinking water to levels below state-established PFOA/PFOS notification levels.

2.  Obtain a more comprehensive monitoring information on potential sources of PFAS

3. Set Effluent guidelines, develop analytical methods and issue water quality criteria for PFAS

WHAT (& WHAT FOR): Lead is a metal often found in pipes, and in old paint (before it was banned in paint in the late 1970s). Before 1996, lead also found in vehicle fuel resulting in  soil contamination in many communities from both paint dust and vehicle pollution. 

HEALTH IMPACT: Lead is a neurotoxin and is known to have no safe blood lead level in children. 

Has been linked to:

1. Brain swelling, anemia, seizures, renal failure, reduced IQ, and ADHD

2. Damages brain development in children

3. Connected to behavioral problems like aggression and bullying, and internalizing problems such as depression and anxiety 

LOCAL IMPACT: Recent research in Santa Ana has shown that there is a disproportionately impact of solid lead contamination crisis on lower income, people of color communities. 

POSSIBLE RESPONSES: There are many ways to respond to lead contamination:

1. Providing special health care for children with high blood lead levels, and investigating possible sources of lead exposure in homes, daycares and school, playground, etc.

2. Implement strict housing policies where landlord and city housing officials are required to have lead inspections of homes for lead paint hazards (especially in low income, people of color communities)

3. Requiring a minimum reduction standard for lead paint in older homes 

4. Requiring blood lead level test as part of the routine check up for children (extremely important for children in low-income housing)

META: Water seems to be one important medium through which NOLA envisions the “impacts” of the Anthropocene—scarcity, abundance, temporalities and spatial distributions, management of, and hazards that emerge in its context. Less is said about the causal or attributional aspects of the Anthropocene. How might water function as an entry point into the assemblages of local anthropocenics?

I found the NOLA Hazard Mitigation Plan for 2018, which frames the impacts of the Anthropocene as an intersection of weather extremes amid climate change and evolving vulnerabilities of its people. Four of seven items in the executive summary note water as central to local interventions: flood awareness, flood repair, flood mitigation, flood infrastructure. Too much water or water in the wrong places and the aftereffect of water on infrastructure and lives. One expression, then, is preparedness.

MACRO: Mitigation is an interesting analytic for the Anthropocene. In the US mitigation plans are shaped by the 1988 Stafford Act (which amended the 1974 Disaster Relief Act). Constraints on communities come through rules, regulations, policies, (dis)incentives, and surveillance by state and federal authorities. Much of this is bound by economic and administrative discourses.

Goals are set in this document—broken out by timelines, activities, priorities, and capabilities. Another expression is classification of anthropocenics by subfields and accounting metrics. How do we measure progress and what is deferred to the future, 5-10 years out from today, a goal that has no tangible accountability but is named and acknowledged. What are the practices of naming, responsibility, and making (in)visible in the Anthropocene?

BIO: One new initiative, Ready for Rain, in particular is of interest to me as it highlights the more neoliberal vision for how the public should self-regulate risk and mitigate harm. I hear this as an extension of a government agency program to make the nation Weather Ready. Other bullets highlight “green” buildings, energies, and infrastructures. These could be examples of how the city envisions the Anthropocene feedback loop of humans changing/planning for climate alterations, which is a fairly typical lens.

Some questions: What does the water do? What does the water know? If we trace water in all its instantiations (e.g. historical water, flow of water, chemistry of water, application of water, temperature of water), what do we learn about the future imaginaries of what NOLA will / could / ought to become?