Powerless Science? ─ Science and Politics in a Toxic World

Boudia and Jas offer this volume questioning the effectiveness of scientific knowledge in informing health-related policy in a world where science is responsible for both creating many new toxic agents and assessing their harm. The book is presented in three parts. First, the history of knowledge application to regulatory policy is reviewed. Endocrine disruptors and carcinogens are used as examples, with discussion of the history of the Ames test and public management of scientific and political uncertainty. The second part addresses activism, covering the "class ecology" debate in 1970s Italy and questioning what types of knowledge are useful, valid, or necessary to draw conclusions and make arguments for regulatory changes, including several case studies where claims of health damage were brought to court. Finally, deficiencies in knowledge and the inertia of the legal and political system are examined, analyzing environmental risk assessment, low-dose toxicology, the possibility of epigenetic effects, and low prevalence pathologies that are difficult to definitively link to causal factors. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Nathalie Jas is a Senior Researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). A historian and a STS scholar, her scholarly work analyses the intensification of agriculture and its social, environmental, and health effects. She has co-edited a special issue of History and Technology, “Risk and risk Society in Historical Perspective” (2007), and Toxicants, Health and Regulations Since 1945 (Pickering & Chatto, 2013), both with Soraya Boudia.