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Paper short abstract

Based on preliminary fieldwork and regulatory analysis, this paper shows how law, atmospheric data, and communication practices on air pollution constitute which 'airs' become governable, revealing ontological work that remains invisible yet politically relevant for whose bodies receive care.

Paper long abstract

Following Mol's insight that medical objects are ontologically multiple–enacted differently across distinct practices rather than variously represented–this paper examines how air pollution is enacted as multiple objects across EU governance and environmental regulation, and how legal and communicative practices articulate, challenge, or stabilize the boundaries between these enactments. EU regulation, from Air Quality Directives (2008, 2024), emphasizing health-based limits, to Industrial Emissions Directive (2010, 2024), which governs facility controls, does not produce a singular "air pollution" but enacts ontologically distinct atmospheric objects through divergent metrics, pollutant prioritizations, and health-impact narratives.

These ontological differences are amplified through public communication: PM2.5, PM10 dominate health messaging with mortality estimates and Air Quality Index alerts, rendering pollution visible as bodily threat requiring behavioral response; nitrogen dioxide and ozone appear in regulatory compliance reports but remain communicatively marginal despite significant health burdens; while acid rain, historically central to environmental mobilization, has nearly disappeared from public discourse. Different pollutants thus inhabit different ontological-communicative registers: some enacted as health crises also by citizens action, others as technical regulatory parameters, still others as historical problems deemed "solved".

These multiplicities become significant when citizens mobilize data in strategic litigation challenging compliance. Courts must adjudicate between regulatory ontologies (threshold exceedance), epidemiological ontologies (attributable mortality), and experiential ontologies (lived exposure, embodied suffering). This paper argues that attending to how law, atmospheric data and communication practices constitute which "airs" and whose exposures become governable reveals the ontological work that remains largely invisible yet politically consequential for whose bodies and communities receive care.