Exposing infrastructure: how activists and experts connect ambient air monitoring and environmental health

Abstract

Ambient air monitoring is one way that community groups, environmental justice (EJ) activists, and environmental agencies assess the health effects of exposures to toxic chemicals. However, monitoring does not measure human exposure directly, leading to the question, how are air quality measurements connected to claims about exposure and health? Since activists and regulatory experts often clash over assessments of environmental health effects, how might the approaches taken by the two differ? Comparing reports on ambient air monitoring from social movement groups and government experts, we show that both make connections between monitoring data and health using a well-developed infrastructure for health assessment. EJ activists rely on the infrastructure to a greater extent than previously acknowledged, although they do challenge fundamental categories, especially distinctions between short- and long-term exposures. Experts working within the infrastructure exercise considerable discretion in how they interpret and implement the standards and categories of health assessment, including by transgressing the short- and long-term distinction in some cases. Our findings call attention to similarities in lay and expert ways of knowing that enable the sharing of information infrastructures and show that information infrastructures are not determinative but potentially malleable, even in the context of expert practices.