On missing New Orleans: Lost knowledge and knowledge gaps in an urban hazardscape

Environmental History

Volumn 13, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 643-650

  Frickel, Scott ^a  

^a WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION; HAZARD ASSESSMENT; TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE; UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS;

LOUISIANA; NEW ORLEANS; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 57049135173     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Essays in this forum by Michael Egan ("Toxic Knowledge: A Mercurial Fugue in Three Parts," 636-42),
2. Linda Nash("Purity and Danger: Historical Reflections on the Regulation of Environmental Pollutants," 651-58),
3. and Barbara Allen ("Environmental Health and Missing Information," 659-66) pursue related themes.
4. On the concept of undone science, see David J. Hess, Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry. Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007).
5. On the cultural production of ignorance, see Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, eds. Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
6. See Susan L. Cutter, American Hazardscapes: The Regionalization of Hazards and Disasters (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2001).
7. Scott Frickel and James R. Elliott, "Tracking Industrial Land Use Conversions: A New Approach for Studying Relict Waste and Urban Development," in Organization and Environment (in press).
8. On relict industrial waste, see Craig E. Cotten, "Historical azards: The Geography of Relict Industrial Wastes." Professional Geographer 42 (1990); 143-56.
9. The sample was drawn from a population of establishments in six major industrial groups-chemicals, petroleum, plastics, primary metals, stone/ glass/clay, and transportation equipment. Detailed methodological information is provided in the original study.
10. Craig E. Cotten, Historical Hazardous Substance Data Base (Springfield: Illinois State Museum, 1992).
11. See Craig E. Colten, All Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).
12. For overviews see, respectively, Nancy Green Leigh and Sarah L. Coffin, "How Many Brownfields Are There? Building an Industrial Legacy Database," Journal of Urban Technology 7 (2000): 1-18;
13. and Robert J. Brulle and David N. Pellow, "Environmental Justice: Human Health and Environmental Inequalities," Annual Review of Public Health 27 (2006):103-24.
14. The EPA test data are available at http://www.epa.gov/katrina/ testresults/index.html. Metropolitan New Orleans includes contiguously populated portions of Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, and St. Bernard parishes. The analysis summarized here is based on data from Orleans Parish (City of New Orleans) only.
15. "Summary Results of Sediment Sampling Conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita" Environmental Protection Agency (August 17, 2006). Available at http:// www.epa.gov/katrina/testresults/sediments/summary.html.
16. Scott Frickel and M. Bess Vincent, "Katrina's Contamination: Regulatory Knowledge Gaps in the Making an Unmaking of Environmental Contention," Chapter submitted for inclusion in Risk, Recovery, and Repatriation after Katrina, ed. Rachel Dowty and Barbara Allen.
17. On the socio-demographic characteristics of the Katrina flood victims in New Orleans, see Richard Campanella, "An Ethnic Geography of New Orleans," Journal of American History (2007): 704-15.
18. The other types of places to look in New Orleans are Superfund sites and landfills See chapter 4 in Colten, Historical Hazardous Substance Data Base, note 5.
19. Richard Campanella, "Geography, Philosophy, and the Build/No Build Line," Technology in Society 29 (2007): 169-72.
20. City of New Orleans, Mayors Office of Communications, "City Announces First 17 Target Recovery Zones: Areas Will Attract Investment, Residents to Key Resources." Press release, March 29, 2007. Available at: http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx? portal=1&load=~/PortalModules/ ViewPressRelease.ascx&itemid=3813.
21. See J. Timmons Roberts and Melissa M. Toffolon-Weiss, Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 16-22.
22. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society. Toward a New Modernity, (London: Sage, 1992),36.
23. William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature,ed. William Cronon (New York, Norton, 1996), 69-90.
24. United States Government Accounting Office, Chemical Regulation: Options Exist to Improve EPA's Ability to Assess Health Risks and Manage its Chemical Review Program (Washington, DC: United States Government Accounting Office, 2005). Available online at http://www.gao.gov/ new.items/d05458.pdf.
25. On the ignorance of ignorance, see Jerome R. Ravetz, "The Sin of Science: ignorance of Ignorance," Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization (December, 1993):157-65.
26. On "epistemic machinery," see Karen Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).