Analyze

By Scott G. Knowles: As part of the STL Anthropocene Field Campus the research team visited the Wood Refinery Refinery History Museum on March 9, 2019. This museum is located on the grounds of the Wood River Refinery, a Shell Oil refinery built in 1917 and today owned by Phillips 66. The site is Roxana, Illinois, just upriver from Granite City, and just over two miles from the convergence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Sitting on the actual grounds of the refinery, the museum is an invitation to think across the micro, meso, and macro scales of the Quotidian Anthropocene, in terms of geography and also in terms of time. This refinery was built at the crux of the WWI, at a time when United States petrochemical production was entering an intensive phase of production, invention, corporate structuring, and global engagement. The museum is an invitation to think across temporal scales, backwards to the start of the refinery--through the individual lives of the workers and engineers whose lives defined the refinery--and forward to indeterminate points of future memory. This photo captures a key moment in an informal interview we did with one of the history guides. He had worked in the museum for decades before retiring. He explained to us that the museum sits in the former research facility of the refinery--and the glass plat he is showing reveals a beautiful artifact, a photograph made of the complex when it was built. Our guide only showed us this collection of slides after our conversation had advanced, perhaps after he was sure we were truly interested in his story, and the deeper history of the refinery. The pride in the place, the community of workers, and the teaching ability of the museum was manifest. The research team felt impressed, but also concerned about the health impacts (and naturally the environmental impacts as well) of the refinery. There was a mismatch in the scales--the memory of the individual tied to emotions of pride and knowledge of hard work done there--and the Anthropocene, global scale of petrochemicals. How do we resolve this mismatch? The glass plate is somehow a clue.

The citations found in this article's bibliography tell us that the information presented was drawn from various research articles about past responses to large disease outbreaks, and public health policies regarding topics such as food safety and bioweapons. This article is an interpertation of existing information, and does not seem to provide any new research.

The author of this article is Sonja D. Schmid. Sonja has degrees in science, technology and society (STS) as well as experience in organizational theory, disaster social issues, and studied risk in relation to different societies and cultures throughout the world.

Some works that referenced or discussed the article include: “Test for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sports”, “Reimaging (Bio)Medicalization, Pharmaceuticals and Genetics: Old Critiques and New Engagements”, “Depression in Japan: Psychiatric Cures for a Society in Distress”, “Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences”, and “Posthumanism”. According to Google Scholar there are eighty-five other articles that reference “Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations”.

The main point of this article is to look at the shortcomings of the response to the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 by the NYPD, PAPD, and FDNY. The article shows that the response was plauged by communication breakdowns between fire companies and commanders, a complete lack of communication between fire and law enforcement agencies with heavy roots in the history of the two departments, and an uncoordinated response by off duty firefighters, who swarmed the area after the attacks. The article discusses various improvements that could have been made after the 1993 bombing and would have significantly effected response on 9/11 such as the improvement and standardization of radio hardware and channels between departments, joint training drills, more rigid command durring response, and the adoption of the FEMA incident command system.

Every year the IAEA releases various reports on its members and the state of nuclear safety, safeguards implementation reports, nuclear technology review, and technical cooperation reports. These documents report the progress of the IAEA on accomplishing its mission statement.

1) “Repeatedly, I have been surprised by the impact that even lightly sketched case histories can have on readers.”

2) “But even the manifesto conceded that less formal expertise would remain important in the areas of practice that had not been subject to high-level testing. THAT confession covers much of the territory.”

With resources available I was unable to determine where else this book has been referenced externally, however the themes and topics presented in this work appear in some of Fassin's other works.

                The methodology of the study is fairly standard. It uses basic reasoning, supported with conclusive data to make its point on the true and falsehoods of communicable diseases associated with natural disasters.

Emergency response is addressed in how it should respond to gender violence in crises from a global/national/organizational perspective, effecting the end result and care on the ground.