TOXICITY 2: The Violence of Thresholds in Philadelphia

Tathagat Bhatia

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2022, vol. 46, issue 4, 698-710

Abstract: In this essay I explore how regulatory standards for lead—which are designed to ensure the quality of drinking water—permit toxic harm to befall Philadelphia's residents, especially communities of color. The bureaucratic practices of the city's water department, I argue, render knowledge about toxic harm and risk both materially and legally illegible—not always despite, but also because of these standards. A class‐action lawsuit filed against the City of Philadelphia over concerns about lead in the residents’ water supply is used to contextualize and explicate a predominant approach to environmental protection that is centered on creating standards to regulate toxic substances. As the case of Philadelphia shows, such an approach is prone to failure because ultimately the harm caused by a pollutant is only secondary to empirical questions about whether actionable thresholds are crossed and protocols breached.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13094

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:46:y:2022:i:4:p:698-710

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0309-1317

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research is currently edited by Alan Harding, Roger Keil and Jeremy Seekings

More articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().