Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the quantification practices integral to the detection and erasure of pharmaceuticals after they are discarded or excreted into the aquatic environment. It argues that institutional practices of measuring erasure threaten not only individual bodies but also the body politic.

Paper long abstract:

When does one successfully arrive at zero? Removal of twenty-first century pollutants such as pharmaceuticals from the environment requires significant technological intervention. Municipal water producers routinely claim that their treatment processes render water free of pharmaceutical remains. Others claim that pharmaceuticals persist in trace amounts, showing up as uncertain "hauntings" (Gordon 2008) in the food and water supply. Although scholars such as Joe Dumit and Stefan Ecks (2005) have highlighted the pharmaceuticalization of everyday life, less attention has been given to the management of the post-lives of drugs, despite the uncertainty regarding what pharmaceuticals do as they circulate beyond their original scripted roles in combinations and concentrations that defy current toxicological models. Drawing methodologically on geographers Ian Cook and Michelle Harrison's (2007) approach of "following" a thing, and theoretically from the recent turn in science studies to the "formulation of negation" (Croissant, 2014), this paper traces the quantification practices integral to the detection and erasure of pharmaceuticals after they are discarded or excreted into the aquatic environment. Through examination of how toxicologists and water works professionals measure and mitigate trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, I demonstrate that institutional practices of measuring erasure threaten to impose new burdens not only on individual bodies, but also on the relationships of trust necessary for maintaining support for critical public infrastructures.