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Abstract
Since the introduction of the slogan “better living through chemistry,” chemical corporations have sought to portray themselves and the synthetic chemicals they manufacture as essential to modern life. Such narratives about the essentiality of chemicals are undergirded by constructions of corporate essentiality, wherein corporations represent themselves as indispensable fixtures of modern life and military might that society cannot live without. A contemporary example of this dynamic is the case of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of globally ubiquitous contaminants that scientists widely regard as toxic. In national defense, the use of PFAS began with the Manhattan Project and continued for decades through the use of aqueous film forming foams (AFFF); PFAS are also present in innumerable consumer products and have diverse industrial applications (e.g., in semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and building material manufacturing). Despite mounting evidence of PFAS toxicity at increasingly low levels of exposure, the chemical industry argues that continued access to PFAS is vital to supply chains and US economic competitiveness on the world stage, while the US Department of Defense (DOD) maintains that PFAS are critically important to mission readiness and national security. Using the environmental health heuristic of “essential use” as my jumping off point, this project examines the social production of chemical essentiality by corporations and the military-industrial complex in the context of PFAS.
Through qualitative data analysis of interviews, participant observation, documents from corporate archives, and historical advertisements for PFAS-containing products, I demonstrate that it took decades of work to construct and sustain a frame of PFAS chemical essentiality. I identify three critical junctures in the social production of PFAS chemical essentiality over time: first, the creation of consumer markets for PFAS-containing products through advertising and public relations; second, the original development of 3M “Light Water” foam in the military-industrial complex and the subsequent routinization of AFFF use across the military; and third, the long-term consequences of PFAS chemical essentiality, through a case study of Wurtsmith Air Force Base that showcases the challenge of holding DOD accountable for PFAS contamination. I argue that it is important to attend to the origins of the PFAS contamination crisis, and I highlight the constitutive role of corporate and military power structures. While the future of PFAS production and the question of whether PFAS will be restricted on a class-wide basis remain uncertain, this dissertation identifies critical junctures (points of production) that set the stage for the present-day ubiquity of these compounds.
