The Chemical Anthropocene

"This article examines the most applied agricultural chemical globally and the active ingredient in Monsanto’s (now Bayer’s) herbicide RoundUp® (Benbrook, 2016)—glyphosate—as a case study to examine the overly narrow approach of current legal frameworks for pesticides evaluation and permissibility. Glyphosate, as with other chemicals, has encountered hurdles both corporate and institutional hindering rigorous testing and proportional regulation according to its risks. In chemical safety assessments, synergistic risks as well as consideration for non-human organisms and ecologies rarely form part of the legal and scientific frameworks analysing the safety or harm of chemicals like glyphosate. This decontextualisation of chemicals from their full effects on vulnerable populations and secondary interactions with other reactive elements in the environment generates a ‘politics of separation’ that detrimentally constrains the aperture of institutional requirements for chemicals such as glyphosate to be regarded as potentially dangerous (Arcuri, 2018). We also argue that technocratic institutions authorising herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals—when narrowly framed as they are today—can be seen as fora for promoting ‘strategic ignorance’ (Mallard & McGoey, 2018), through the articulation of certain epistemologies of power. Certain sites that enable contestation, such as courts, we show, become venues for either subverting or generating scientific precaution and environmental justice claims by those most affected by questionable chemicals."

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