Abstract
Environmental cleanup may involve decontaminating an area affected by a radiological release, containing an oil spill, or remediating a Superfund site or brownfield. It is a key component of how environmental agencies work to protect public health and the environment. There are many publications on technical protocols for cleanup and waste disposal. Additionally, there has been much social science work on the social problems of environmental contamination. However, social science research on cleanup itself has been much more scattered across disciplines and incidents. To date, there has not been a comprehensive review of the social factors that affect cleanup processes and outcomes. Such social factors may include cultural worldviews that shape stakeholder perspectives on ‘how clean is clean’ and social relationships among stakeholders. This article fills this gap by providing an interdisciplinary literature review of the social science of environmental cleanup. Three principal themes emerged from the 97 articles that met selection criteria: effects on cleanup worker health, public engagement and decision-making, and societal benefits of cleaned-up sites. The review points to areas where further research is needed. For example, there is a lack of mixed methods and interdisciplinary engagement within the literature. Additionally, few articles compare cleanup situations. There is also a need for further investigation into specific social science topics such as labor practices, gender, race, and power relationships. To address these gaps, we argue for the development of a comprehensive framework or model as well as the exploration of broader questions complicating cleanups. Overall, this area of research has significant potential to benefit environmental cleanup policy and practice worldwide, while advancing social theory about people and the environment.
Highlights
Cleaning up toxic contaminants and hazardous waste is a cornerstone of environmental protection in the United States (US) and abroad
We evaluated the articles according to a checklist of nine quality standards: focus, verity, integrity, rigor, soundness, applicability and utility, clarity and completeness, uncertainty and variability, and evaluation and review (EPA 2003, 2013)
Public health and epidemiological studies document the impact of environmental cleanups on worker physical and mental health
Summary
Cleaning up toxic contaminants and hazardous waste is a cornerstone of environmental protection in the United States (US) and abroad. In the US, there are 1345 sites on the Superfund National Priority List (NPL) and an estimated 450 000 contaminated brownfields properties. Some hazardous waste sites, such as Love Canal and Warren County, North Carolina, play important roles in the history of US environmental policy and environmental justice. Others, such as historic industrial buildings contaminated with mercury or residential yards with high levels of lead in the soil, may not be nationally renowned yet still pose a risk to human health and require an extensive and costly cleanup
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