Jennifer Liss Ohayon, Alissa Cordner, Andrea Amico, Phil Brown & Lauren Richter just published “Persistent chemicals, persistent activism: scientific opportunity structures and social movement organizing on contamination by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances” in the Social Movement Studies journal.
The article argues that despite decades of industrial production and widespread
contamination, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were a politically obscure class of chemicals until a recent spike in attention from activist, regulatory, and scientific circles. Drawing from in depth interviews with activists of PFAS-impacted communities, they develop the scientific opportunity concept to examine how activists create and mobilize scientific factors to support their goals, and how scientific factors, in turn, support the emergence of further activism.
