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. 2008 Dec;49(4):417-35.
doi: 10.1177/002214650804900404.

Pollution comes home and gets personal: women's experience of household chemical exposure

Rebecca Gasior Altman  1 , Rachel Morello-Frosch, Julia Green Brody, Ruthann Rudel, Phil Brown, Mara Averick
Affiliations

Pollution comes home and gets personal: women's experience of household chemical exposure

Rebecca Gasior Altman et al. J Health Soc Behav. 2008 Dec.

Abstract

We report on interviews conducted with participants in a novel study about environmental chemicals in body fluids and household air and dust. Interviews reveal how personal and collective environmental history influence the interpretation of exposure data, and how participants fashion an emergent understanding of environmental health problems from the articulation of science and experience. To the illness experience literature, we contribute a framework for analyzing a new category of embodied narratives--"exposure experience"--that examines the mediating role of science. We update social scientific knowledge about social responses to toxic chemicals during a period in which science alters public understanding of chemical pollution. This article is among the first published accounts of participants' responses to learning personal exposure data, research identified as critical to environmental science and public health. Our findings raise the importance of reporting even uncertain science and underscore the value of a community-based reporting strategy

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure Illustrates Instructions Participants Received for Reading Individual Exposure Results in the Cape Cod Household Exposure Study
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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    1. Boswell-Penc Maia. Tainted Milk: Breastmilk, Feminisms, and the Politics of Environmental Degradation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press; 2006.

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