8. Pollution Comes Home And Gets Personal: Women’S Experience Of Household Chemical Exposure

Abstract

We report on interviews conducted with participants in a novel study about envi ronmental 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 envi ronmental health problems from the articulation of science and experience.To the illness experience literature, we contribute a framework for analyzing a new cat egory of embodied narratives?(i exposure experience "?that examines the medi ating role of science.We update social scientific knowledge about social respons es to toxic chemicals during a period in which science alters public understand ing of chemical pollution.This article is among the first published accounts of par ticipants ' responses to learning personal exposure data, research identified as critical to environmental science and public health.Our findings raise the impor tance of reporting even uncertain science and underscore the value of a commu nity-based reporting strategy.Science increasingly contributes to how peo ple discover and understand environmental problems (Murphy 1997), both aside from and in addition to their embodied or direct experi ence.Biomonitoring science and personal ex