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Love Canal, USA

Misria
In response to

Residents of Love Canal, in the Niagara Falls region of Western New York, were alerted to signs of a toxic waste crisis involving the lethal chemical byproduct dioxin in the late 1970s. Residents learned about the crisis through news media, community activism and research, and their own visceral experiences – they could smell noxious fumes, noticed black sludge seeping into their basements, and saw children falling ill. Activists and academics carried out community-based research to survey the area in an effort to understand the extent of the hazard and its effects – data that they saw as missing, at the time – in turn generating evidence of changes in health and pregnancy abnormalities. In doing so, members of the community aimed to hold corporate and government stakeholders accountable to evacuate residents, organize remediation, and strengthen scientific studies and interventions to care for residents. Regional health authorities, however, dismissed community-based studies as “useless housewife data”. Activists responded by scrutinizing government and scientific studies, critiquing a lack of ecological validity and trustworthiness. Residents and community groups’ advocacy contributed to their exercise of epistemic authority, the creation of archival records and initiatives tracking the crisis over the last five decades, and wider public attention to Love Canal and other sites like it.

Image Description and Source: "Map showing distribution of symptoms believed to be caused by Love Canal pollutants," Digital Collections - University at Buffalo Libraries, May 1982.

Shankar, Saguna. 2023. "What's the Use of Data? Epistemic Authority and Environmental Injustice at Love Canal." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali. Kim Fortun, Phillio Baum and Prerna Srigyvan. Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawaiti, Nov 8-11.

Louisiana Tumor Registry Research & Critiques

tschuetz
Annotation of
In response to

Lawsuit led by River Region Crime Commission (RRCC) to retrieve LTR information

http://www.la-fcca.org/Opinions/PUB2004/2004-04/2003CA0079.Apr2004.Pub.12.pdf 

Article by Barbara Allen (2005). The problem with epidemiology data in assessing environmental health impacts of toxic sites

https://www.witpress.com/Secure/elibrary/papers/EEH05/EEH05048FU.pdf 

“The registry focuses on cancer incidence, which can be caused by a number of factors, instead of the risk faced by people exposed to emissions from industrial operations. In Terrell's view, that has allowed companies and by the state Department of Environmental Quality to misconstrue its significance.” (Mitchell 2021)

“While scientists will argue that the one-year reporting standard, as set by the state statute, is arbitrary, a five-year reporting timetable is equally arbitrary and less sensitive to changing health patterns. More problematic, however, were the eight large geographic regions. Each region consisted of as many as twelve parishes (a parish is a county in Louisiana) and in the case of the regions that include the parishes of the chemical corridor, industrial parishes are “diluted” by non-industrial parishes, making the determination of elevated cancer rates near chemical plants impossible to decide. The LTR also tends to downplay the rarer cancers, both adult and pediatric, saying the “rates tend to fluctuate because of small numbers...[and] are less reliable and should be cautiously interpreted” [4]. This infuriates the residents and researchers as these rare cancers are of major concern as they may be linked to chemical exposure.”

Response to new health study (March 2021) 

https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/press/2021/3/22/new-public-health-study-does-little-to-allay-fears-in-cancer-alley 

 http://denka-pe.com/about-us/denkaunhr/ 

Tumor Registry Data Source

tschuetz
Annotation of
In response to

“The Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR) collects information from the entire state on the incidence of cancer. This information includes the types of cancer (morphology, grade, and behavior), anatomic location, extent of cancer at the time of diagnosis (stage), treatment, and outcomes (survival and mortality).”

 “[A]ny health care facility or provider diagnosing or treating cancer patients shall report each case of cancer to the registry. It also protects health care facilities and providers that disclose confidential data in good faith to the LTR from damages arising from such disclosures.”, see cancer reporting.

Toxic Release Inventory Mission

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Annotation of
In response to

Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Public Health

Mission: “To collect and report complete, high-quality, and timely population-based cancer data in Louisiana to support cancer research, control, and prevention.” 

The LTR was formally founded in 1979 under the auspices of Louisiana’s Office of Public Health.

In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed The Cancer Registries Amendment Act making official a national program of cancer registries and monies to fund them.