Short abstract:

Innovations have produced advancements but are also responsible for microplastics and PFAS in the environment. Analysing policy documents and YouTube videos as two narrative genres, we study how knowledge, concerns, and care are entangled, and what this teaches us about (ir)responsible innovation.

Long abstract:

While discussions around microplastics and PFAS ('forever chemicals') have been debated along separate lines, they are linked in multiple ways. For example, PFAS occur as microplastics or are used as coatings on synthetic textiles and plastic components that then break down into microplastics. Therefore, it seems relevant to explore the knowledge regimes that are mobilized in narratives of both substances.

Our analysis is embedded in the ERC Advanced Grant project “Innovation Residues: Modes and infrastructures of caring for our longue-durée environmental futures” (PI: Ulrike Felt, GA 1010545), which investigates how societies know, make sense of, live with, and care for innovation residues, the left-behinds of technological innovations. We specifically focus on European policy documents for microplastics and YouTube videos explaining PFAS.

Policy documents and YouTube videos are seen as two arenas where various knowledge regimes are brought to bear and shape the understanding of the issues of concern and how to address them. They speak to specific audiences and therefore it is essential to analyse the situated narrative constructions of relations between matters of facts (settled knowledge claims), matters of concern (for whom and when is it a problem), and finally matters of care (who is responsible for taking action).

We will point to how the 'epistemic things' – microplastics and PFAS – are described and how scientific knowledge regimes are positioned in these different arenas. We will also show how issues of responsible governance of innovations and related residues are imagined, performed, and addressed.

Short abstract:

This presentation explores how internal industry documents in the chemical sector are utilized in scientific literature, revealing corporate strategies influencing public policy. Our scoping review identifies 15 papers detailing pervasive chemical corporate influence.

Long abstract:

Internal corporate documents provide crucial insights into academic and industrial chemistry, revealing opportunities and challenges for responsible innovation. We conducted a scoping review spanned 28 academic databases, seeking peer-reviewed scientific articles that examine the internal documents of chemical corporations. To categorize corporate influences within the chemical industry, we utilized theoretical frameworks such as Marc-Andre Gagnon and Sergio Sismondo's ghost management, Ulrich Beck's concept of risk society (1992), and Michel Foucault's order of discourse/things (2013).

Gagnon and Dong's review on pharmaceutical corporate capture found 37 papers published before 2022, while our study on the chemical industry identified only 15 relevant papers. When comparing the two industries, fewer papers examine how chemical corporations employ scientific (28 vs. 13), professional (16 vs. 7), and market (4 vs. 2) captures. However, the chemical industry review shows higher instances of regulatory (6 vs. 13), civil society (4 vs. 6), media (3 vs. 4), and technological captures (2 vs. 3) compared to pharmaceuticals.

Both industries employ conflict of interest and legitimization strategies to protect their corporate interests and deflect public policy inquiries. However, a significant distinction lies in their objectives: the pharmaceutical industry primarily aims for profit maximization, while the chemical industry focuses on institutionalizing ignorance, evading liability, and preempting regulatory actions.

This presentation exposes intentional efforts by chemical corporations to promote ignorance and foster conflicts of interest, thereby legitimizing their business models and safeguarding chemical corporate interests. Those chemical corporate captures highlight barriers to responsible innovation but also present an opportunity to rethink public policy.

Short abstract:

Emerging concerns about the chemical universe fall between risk governance institutions, feeding into a creeping crisis. We propose hormonal infrastructures as an analytical framework to build adaptive capacities for more responsible chemical practices across multiple levels.

Long abstract:

Chemicals of emerging concern contribute to major diseases and biodiversity loss, while chemical pollution overall surpasses safe planetary boundaries. Traditional risk management practices, regulations and even academic research struggle to keep pace with novel chemical entities and the diverse scales of toxic endpoints, fueling a creeping crisis where toxic effects on life-sustaining systems remain insufficiently addressed until it is too late.

To navigate this complex, scientifically uncertain and socio-politically ambiguous chemical landscape, previous research has emphasized the need for institutional reforms, while noting on "molecular bureaucracy" as the deeply entrenched gameboard that conditions regulatory moves and chemical imagination. We propose hormonal infrastructures as a missing metaphor, epistemically bridging the scales of evidence-focused chemical risk governance with those of toxic unknown-unknowns represented by endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Our empirical work turns to recent policy documents, interviews and case studies to examine the institutional dynamics and underlying rationale of chemical governance in Finland, a national case implementing EU regulations while undergoing reforms.

We critically analyze how scientific accounts and political strategies co-produce certain kinds of chemical realities, innovation traps and institutional lock-ins, thus restricting or enabling certain kinds of policy interventions. In other words, our integrative approach aims to pinpoint controversies that reveal opportunities for more responsible chemical practices within and between formal and informal institutions of risk governance to address this creeping crisis of multi-chemical exposures.

Short abstract:

The paper argues for using SSbD to develop the chemical sector towards a social-responsive attitude. It compares the approach with two prominent approaches and draws on a case study. The expectation is that SSbD facilitates responsible practices due to co-creation relations between stakeholders.

Long abstract:

The chemical domain and its innovations play a significant role in production networks and industrial systems. Nevertheless, several cases of high adverse social-environmental effects due to its activities have been historically documented. It follows that the need to develop a chemical sector towards a more societal-responsive attitude is imperative for future innovations in the field, thus making responsibility a fundamental value. In recent years, a new approach, Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD), has gained momentum in Europe. At the framework’s core is a holistic ecosystem approach, focusing on stakeholder engagement and aiming at co-development starting from the design stages. However, how SSbD approaches responsibility needs to be clarified. The paper aims to clarify such a question. To do so, the paper performs a conceptual analysis by comparing SSbD with other prevalent approaches to chemistry innovation activities and shaping them towards a socially responsive attitude, namely, Responsible Innovation (RI) and the 12 Principles for Green Chemistry (PGC). By reviewing the three approaches and comparing the main assumptions, it is possible to gain theoretical insight into how responsibility is enacted. The expectation is that RI and PGC have limitations in locating and embedding responsibility in complex innovation ecosystems. On the contrary, SSbD is expected to enable a response-ability capacity, allowing stakeholders’ co-creation relationship. To ground the theoretical understanding and practical possibilities, the findings are discussed by reading the historical PCE water contamination case study, suggesting the different outcomes the three approaches would have allowed if used.

Short abstract:

Our research delves into how the socio-historical context of Chemelot, a chemistry cluster in the Netherlands, conditions the trajectory of an initiative to turn away from fossil fuel. The paper details how the identity of the region shapes the direction of the project.

Long abstract:

Amidst the growing prevalence of the chemical industry in global economies, the sector faces pressing challenges, particularly regarding its reliance on fossil fuels and the associated CO2 emissions. Recent years have seen an upsurge in collaborative initiatives to tackle these issues. This research aims to investigate the internal dynamics of one such initiatives, namely the ISPA project at Chemelot, an industrial cluster in the south of the Netherlands. The project seeks to develop plasma chemistry as an alternative pathway based on electricity instead of fossil fuels. Focussing on this case, we investigate how the local socio-historical context of Chemelot shapes the direction of the ISPA initiative. By analyzing both contemporary and historical documents and interviewing industry members and local historians, we trace the narratives of both past and present energy transitions at Chemelot. A key ingredient of the narratives are the ‘identity’ of the cluster and the region at large, which connects representations of the past to desirable directions of the future. We highlight how the identity both enables and constrains the outlooks of the ISPA project. Paradoxically, the radical new emerges from an idealized past.