2018 Conference

Poster Presentation

With over 1,700 contaminated sites on the Superfund National Priority List, an estimated 450,000 brownfields in the US, and risks of hazardous material release, the need to clean up toxic waste and contaminants is more important than ever. Environmental cleanup of industrial legacy sites or after environmental emergencies involves the removal, treatment, and waste disposal of chemical, biological, and radiological materials. While public perspectives may be included in cleanup decisions, technical solutions may not fully address the diverse socioeconomic dimensions of environmental health risks, contamination, and decontamination. This poster illustrates recent research that begins to untangle the socio-environmental nexus inherent to cleanups. We investigate the current state of social science on three questions: 1) What social factors affect cleanup processes and outcomes? 2) How to evaluate social and environmental outcomes of cleanup? and 3) What research gaps need to be filled to better understand socio-environmental system interactions in cleanup? Our research has two main parts. First, we conducted a systematic literature review of journal articles, books, and reports that use social science theory and/or methods to analyze cleanup of environmental hazards. Second, we conducted interviews with US Environmental Protection Agency employees who work on cleanups. The interviews provide a perspective from practitioners about what types of factors affect cleanup outcomes and how stakeholders interact throughout the cleanup process. Preliminary results suggest that employment patterns, gendered labor practices, public trust, social identity, and property values affect and are affected by cleanups. This research synthesizes social science knowledge of a topic that has heretofore been approached largely from an environmental science and engineering perspective. It serves as a foundation for developing a socio-environmental systems approach to analyzing cleanups. It also provides insights into how to include environmental social science research in institutional problem solving.