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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 authors are Stephen Collier, PhD and Andrew Lakoff, PhD. Dr, Collier is an associate professor of international affairs at UC Berkeley. He is an anthropologist by training, and focuses his research on a variety of political schools of thought and their applications. Dr, Lakoff is an associate professor of sociology and focuses his research globalization, biomedical innovation and the history of human sciences.

The stakeholders in the film would be the doctors, the local health ministry, and the patients themselves. The doctors were the most focused on, and they were put into a lot of situations in which they were the sole decision makers. However, many times the decisions weren't life or death, but death or comfort. For instance, Davinder was in a situation where a child was inexplicably swelling all over his body. The doctors weren't well equipped for diagnosing his illness, and thus the child was doomed to worsen and die. A nurse informed him that the mother had taken the child and left, to which Davinder remarked that he couldn't blame them. He believed the comfort of the child in somewhere without his care was worth just as much as, if not more than, his care in the hospital. This was quite different than Kiara's opinion that they needed to stay in the hospital. She blamed it on a lack of confidence in medical ability, while he saw it as being human.

Following the time on the mission, the doctors all had to decide what was next. Dr. Brasher left MSF to practice medicine in Paris, while Dr. Gill went to Australia to become a pediatrician, with no plans of returning to MSF. Dr. Lapora was promoted to Emergency Coordinator, and established three more missions in other parts of the world. Dr. Krueger still works with MSF and has been on a number of other missions. All of the doctors continued medicine, but their experiences in Liberia dictated their plans on whether to continue this service.  

The author references this article in a number of his other works. 

The Mental Health Action planned was published by the World Health Organization, with colaboration from its members states, the general population, and other international agencies.

"The violence broke out when the patient spit at the Emergency Service Unit officers and swore at them. The officers responded by hitting him in the face, hauling him off the stretcher to the ground and then tossing him back on the stretcher, the EMTs said in written statements submitted to the FDNY."

""Three cops began to punch the patient in the face, EMS (had) to get in the middle of it to intervene. Pt's. wounds and injuries cleaned in the (ambulance)," the report said"

Dr. Peter Kramer- a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University. Author of the article. 

Funding appears to come from the university, along with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

The shift in thought from prevention to response is well supported as a necessary move. This can obviously be seen by the occurrence of these accidents despite adequate regulation. Nuclear energy is a promising, but dangerous thing, and can quickly become disastrous despite efforts to maintain control. This was seen in the accident at Fukushima, following the earthquake and resulting tsunami in the region. Despite preparation for such an event and the existence of backup generators and batteries, responders were rendered useless in the efforts as they could not access the area. This is where the need for a prepared system of nuclear response is needed. Historically, such emergency response groups have been poorly resourced and short-lived, such as the Soviet Spetsatom developed after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. This group, which focused on preserving lessons learned and developing response systems, was absorbed by a larger ministry with the goal of integrated disaster response.

Additionally, the author cites a number of factors that played a role in creating the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, such as “environmental, social, and technical systems” that, due to their complexity and separate protocol, resulted in lack or preparedness for the disaster. Following the disaster, the response efforts were delayed by this lack of preparation, and the media called out TEPCO and the Japanese government for this. STS analysis is important in this aftermath as much as in the creation of the initial plan. By utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the media (and the people) can be heard and used to reform existing policies, or create new ones. This establishes a continuously evolving system of response that can adapt and take into account many different view of disaster relief. 

Funding for the ARC comes from donations, selling of health and safety products designed by the red cross, and the selling of blood products collected by the red cross.