Engineers' imaginaries of "the public": Content analysis of reader reactions to an environmental injustice controversy

• Main Authors: Canney, Nathan, Lambrinidou, Yanna
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chemicals; Contamination; ethics; Government; Industries; Interviews; Lenses; Monitoring; social imaginary; social justice
• ISSN: 2377-634X
• DOI: 10.1109/FIE.2018.8659220

This full research paper presents an analysis of 43 engineers' responses to a 2015 newspaper article about a conflict in St. Rose, LA between affected residents, governmental agencies, and industry representatives concerning potential environmental contamination from a local chemical plant. The article contains conflicting points of view about the facts of the case, leaving readers with no clear sense for which party might be "right." In reading it, research participants were faced with contradictory information about air monitoring data and the potential health risks involved. While residents reported that data showed clear exceedance of federal air quality standards and that toxic air emissions were causing them widespread and severe health problems, governmental agencies and industry representatives argued that federal limits were being met and that data confirmed the absence of a public health concern. Interview participants included first-year and senior undergraduate students, engineering faculty, and engineering professionals with at least five years of work experience outside academia. Each participant was asked to read the article, share their initial reactions, and discuss what they would recommend as "next steps" in the conflict. Interview recordings were transcribed and analyzed by two reviewers, using emergent thematic coding. Analysis of participant responses showed two main reactions. The first was that residents' reported health experiences must have been true and that the community's association of these experiences with industrial air emissions, at the very least, deserved attention. This position tended to be accompanied by efforts on the part of participants to reconcile conflicting information from governmental agencies and industry representatives. The second was that the governmental and industry interpretations of the monitoring data must have been correct and that the community's reported experiences and/or interpretations must have been at least to some degree invalid. This position tended to be accompanied by efforts on the part of participants to reconcile conflicting information from the residents. Participants' responses to the article required at least partial reliance on their 'gut feeling' about the likely intent, mindset, and conduct of affected communities in environmental injustice controversies. We thus treated their responses as a 'window' into engineers' imaginaries of "the public" and drew on the theoretical lens of