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Data infrastructure supporting recognition of the anthropocenic air pollution in the context of the 6th Naphtha plants is the collection of health related and biological data, as it could be one possibility to sue. The data collected in scientific studies mentioned in the film were the concentration of a certain metabolite (produced when being exposed to VCM) in the bodies of children visiting the schools nearby and the incidence of cancer in the surrounding area. Doing medical and epidemiological research on these topics could help to set regulations. And - and that's maybe even more important to the people affected - if you can prove that you got a disease from being near the factory, you might be able to sue.

One ecosystem mentioned in the film was the one of oysters  -which actually is also man-made, as it is an oyster-farm - but I think it becomes very clear in the film that it became more difficult to the oyster-farmers to cultivate the oysters through the 6th Naphtha petrochemical complex. The farmers talk about  mud and other new circumstances that kill the larvae of the oysters. In this context, this is also affecting the socio-sphere, and the impact on the eco-sphere is not so much highlighted in the film, but I think it would be interesting to look further in this point.

The technical infrastructure that is supposed to monitor fixed pollution sources by law is not working properly in the case of the 6th Naphtha (- or it is made to work not properly). There should be CEMS “Continuous Emission Monitoring System” installed directly at some of the chimneys, and there was data produced by the systems, showing a lot of cases of excessive emission - but data was described to be invalid due to maintenance of the apparatus. The activists describe this as a loophole. It is interesting here, how standards and monitoring is not only a question of what is asked by law or regulated by law, but also what happens to avoid these regulations. So what civic data is needed here? It would be the measurements of the CEMS  or from other monitoring systems not only at the plant, but for example nearby the school. As one activist stresses in the documentary, there were for example infrared thermometers at one school, that recorded the heat of the accident mentioned in the film. This is an example for civic data.  It was also interesting here, how a person in the film said, that their own bodies monitor the pollution (“Our body is more sensitive”): they feel in their bodies, what the monitoring devices supposedly do not notice. 

One could say that there are several subjectivities produced in the context of the 6th Naphtha petrochemical complex: being someone who suffers from a disease or the smell, the risk to get health issues due to the exposure to the polluted air; being an activist who fights against formosa company, being a oyster farmer who has become politicised by the environmental pollution. In this context, for me it is the point of being at risk is very interesting, as it seems to lead people to different kinds of action: to produce knowledge about these risks, to relocate children from one school to another etc.

I am particularly interested in comparative approaches on how different sites (and academics in those places or studying them) are thinking about COVID in their localities. How are people dealing with issues of trust and information in an era when entire archives are in danger (like the police archives in Guatemala which had been rescued in the past decade and are now in danger). This question expands beyond COVID but has become crucial in the context of Ecuador where reliable data is hard to come by. Another important aspect for us is how indigenous communities are fairing amid the pandemic (here a fabulous article on the terrible situation in Brazil—which is not so different to Ecuador's). This touches on issues of communication, infrastructure, language, systemic racism, and more. Finally, I am also interested in ways in which we might be a able to contribute to some of these issues from our academic spaces. Collaborators (which can take many forms) are certainly welcomed.

I'm a co-founder of Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography, a space for academic experimentations supported by two top ranked universities in Ecuador (University of Cuenca and FLACSO-Ecuador). We are located in Cuenca, where I am assistant professor of medical anthropology. Together with a team of researchers we have been tracking covid19 with a specific focus on Latin America through Spanish language podcasts, collective texts, webinars, and online forums.

My current ethnographic interest is on documenting data distrust networks from the neighborhood scale to the national level in Ecuador, and how these networks have produced distinctive approaches (and failures) to the current pandemic.

I was interested in learning about how air pollution has been talked/researched in the New Orleans area. Mainly, the need to highlight local specificities and historical analysis. A 1950s study on air pollution in New Orleans (Air Pollution and New Orleans Asthma), for instance, documented asthma incidence among black communities (sadly the article still uses the N word), and its relationship to underground fire burning in nearby dumps. The study is more comprehensive and did a census in part of the city as well as a number of medical tests on 84 individuals.

A second study, this one from 2007, documented asthma in children (Prevalence of Indoor Allergen Exposures among New Orleans Children with Asthma). It has a relevant focus of the differences between document indoor allergen exposure in different areas of the US and how subtropical weather in NOLA plays an important role in the kinds of allergies that children with asthma face. One of the main findings of the study can be summarized in the following quote “our data show that asthmatic children in New Orleans may be exposed to a greater number of allergens at moderate to high levels compared to asthmatic children living in other inner cities and to the general population.”

Finally, a third reference, the book Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast talks about something, others have already pointed out (@Omar Perez Figueroa for instance) regarding areas that undergo dramatic change and hardship after natural disasters like hurricane Katrina and Rita. This book, particularly chapter 5 (though I can’t access the full text) explains the highly toxic environment that resulted (and remains) in the New Orleans area due to little clean-up action following the disasters. Lack of funding, deference to poorly resourced local authorities, and policy-failure all affect New Orleans (and many of our sites of research) particularly the fate of vulnerable communities.