Expert Answer :BOS 3401 – Psychosocial Effects of Hazardous Toxic

Solved by a verified expert :Psychosocial Effects of Hazardous ToxicWaste Disposal in CommunitiesSocial Forces, December 1993From Opposing Viewpoints in ContextSince the contamination episodes at Love Canal, Times Beach, and Bhopal rendered the names ofthose places synonymous with chemical disasters, the American public has grown ever more anxiousabout the risks associated with exposure to toxic wastes. As scientific knowledge and popularawareness of the dangers have increased, experts have developed a new technical specialization inrisk assessment and citizens have organized to insure that their voices are heard in deliberations onwaste management. This cultural shift has been widely reported, from local citizens’ recurring NIMBY(not in my backyard) opposition to the siting of hazardous waste facilities to the chemical industry’spresentation of self: the Allied Chemical Corporation became simply the Allied Corporation, andanother firm’s advertisements dropped its claims for "better living through chemistry."Peck’s compilation of essays addresses a number of the key social psychological issues raised bythese developments. Written largely by sociologists — accompanied by a handful of psychologists andplanning and policy analysts — the essays treat such matters as socially structured variations in riskassessments, the communication of risk, community responses to hazardous waste exposure andcommunity preparedness for toxic disasters, and the framing of legal and policy deliberations on themanagement of hazardous waste. They discuss most of these topics in terms familiar to mainstreamsociology, but it is also noteworthy that two of the essays address them from the stances ofpostmodernism and Freudian psychology, respectively, giving the volume something of a catholicapproach to the issues.But the diversity of topics and approaches is also the book’s principal weakness, as with manyanthologies. The essays are not grouped in any systematic way, nor are they interspersed witheditorial commentary linking themes and pointing up differences. Thus there is little sense ofcumulative results; an integrated assessment of key findings and work left to be done would havebeen useful. Some essays contain redundant material, and one wonders why inclusion of a ratherspeculative essay on the effects of prenatal exposure to dioxin (resting largely on a single case) wasthought necessary or helpful. The volume is also poorly copyedited. The text far too often distracts thereader with major and minor typographical errors, and the quality of the writing varies markedly fromessay to essay, in the worst cases obscuring the sense of arguments.However, the compilation is not without its virtues. Several of the essays provide useful overviews oftheir subject matter; among these are Hallman and Wandersman’s chapter on risk perceptions,Mullen’s and Mazur’s essays on the communication of risks and its effects on citizens, andFinsterbusch’s work on community responses to exposure to hazardous wastes. And if Walker’sFreudian arguments regarding our psychosexual resistance to matters of waste seem a stretch as anexplanation of the politics of toxic waste, his essay at least suggests the role in those politics ofpsychological factors and nonrational considerations.Together the essays highlight a number of important issues and themes. Because environmental decisions about toxic waste are generally shrouded in (natural) scientific uncertainty (regarding safelevels of exposure, the nature and distribution of effects, etc.) and because they lay bare valueconflicts (e.g., between environmental safety and jobs), questions involving trust, fairness, and politicalconflict emerge. Consider the sensitive role of communication and persuasion. Mullen identifies thepotential (and real) abuse of the new risk-assessment techniques through which industry andgovernment experts often attempt to assuage citizens’ health concerns using such disingenuousdevices as conflating voluntarily assumed risks with imposed ones. Governments may even withholdinformation from citizens, who often find government slow to act on toxic waste issues (Finsterbusch).But governments must face the constrain inherent in community preparedness for toxic disasters,which warn citizens that toxic disasters are possible, thereby increasing citizens’ demands onbureaucracies with already-strained resources (Faupel and Bailey). Citizens are therefore commonlysuspicious of the roles and views of government and industry, which may help explain Mazur’s findingthat public opposition to hazardous facilities increases with the quantity of mass media coverage,however balanced the journalism may be with respect to the risks and benefits involved. Trust is notenhanced by evidence that such facilities are disproportionately located near poor communities, putthere pursuant to apparently favorable calculations of risks and benefits and political feasibility.Here, then, is the sort of policy issue in clear need of wider and more forthright public deliberation.Moreover, if the NIMBY reflex is understandable, it nonetheless remains philosophically incoherent inthe context of our advanced society: we commonly "choose" the benefits of technology while avoidingrational disposition of its costs (wastes, risks). Ultimately, too, continued reliance on technical "fixes" totechnological costs may be unnecessarily self-limiting. As Catton and Murphy properly suggest, we willneed to cast our conceptual and moral nets more widely and more deeply if we are to avoidenvironmental destruction and political injustice.Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1993 Oxford University Press. Source CitationYeager, Peter Cleary. "Psychosocial Effects of Hazardous Toxic Waste Disposal inCommunities." Social Forces, vol. 72, no. 2, 1993, p. 601+. Opposing Viewpointsin Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A14940291/OVIC?u=oran95108&xid=f7d1306a. Accessed 11 Apr. 2017.Gale Document Number: GALE|A14940291Research a hazardous waste incident such as the Love Canal or Minimata Bay incident. Create a 7-to 10 slide PowerPoint presentation on the incident you choose. You should thoroughly describe the details f the incident and analyze the causes and effects. Your presentation should address the following:Provide a brief history of RCRA and what aspects of waste it regulates.What was the cause of the incident? What types of waste were involved?What were the environmental and human health consequences?What regulations were in place at the time of the incident? Were they followed?What do you think could have been done to prevent the incident?Could this incident happen today with the regulations we have in place? Why, or why not?