Project description
Examining toxic expertise in the petrochemical industry
Toxic expertise encompasses two distinct meanings. Firstly, it refers to scientific knowledge concerning the health effects associated with toxic pollution. Secondly, it pertains to expertise that is used to justify a lack of corporate social responsibility. The ERC-funded ToxicExpertise project aims to critically examine this concept by specifically focusing on the global petrochemical industry, which is a significant yet controversial source of toxic pollution. The industry’s conflicting interests, which include job creation, economic prosperity and health concerns, result in unequal regulations and risks across different countries. The project will undertake a comprehensive analysis of toxic expertise within the major global petrochemical companies and environmental NGOs located in western Europe, North America and China.
Objective
This research project critically examines ‘toxic expertise’, the contested politics of making scientific claims about the health impacts of toxic pollution. Toxic expertise has a double meaning: scientific expertise about the effects of toxic pollution, and the toxic nature of expertise that is used to justify a lack of corporate social responsibility. The research focuses on the global petrochemical industry as a significant but controversial source of toxic pollution, with unequal regulations and risks across different countries and populations. Debates about the global petrochemical industry reflect conflicting interests between jobs, prosperity, and health. This research contributes to interdisciplinary social scientific research on science and technology, environmental justice movements, and the uneven geography of capitalism. In particular, it develops sociological arguments that scientific ‘expertise’ is inherently political and socially constructed. This mixed method comparative research will be conducted in three stages. The first stage will examine toxic expertise in the leading global petrochemical companies and environmental non-governmental organisations in Western Europe, North America, and China. The second stage will focus on in-depth case studies in the United States and China, two of the top petrochemical producers in the world. The third stage will develop an international public resource of toxic expertise to address practical challenges of capacity and scale inherent within both dominant and citizen-led epidemiology, by developing accessible information and tools for understanding, monitoring, and reporting toxic pollutants and their health impacts. The project offers the first systematic sociological analysis of the global petrochemical industry in relation to environmental justice, responding to calls within critical social science for the democratisation of science which highlight the need for greater accountability and transparency.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences environmental sciences pollution
- social sciences economics and business business and management employment
- social sciences economics and business economics sustainable economy
- social sciences law
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-STG - Starting Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2014-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
CV4 8UW COVENTRY
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.