Identification, understanding, and response: exploring the exposure experience.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20199944

The modern world is so thoroughly chemicalized that chemical contamination is the expected state of being, yet only some people discover their exposure. This dissertation is about the exposure experience; the process by which people come to discover, understand, and respond to their chemical exposure. Chemical exposure takes place at the intersections of science and technology, health and medicine, economic production, governmental regulation, and everyday life. This means that exposed peoples must take multilevel action at these intersections to develop meaningful responses to their contamination. This dissertation explores the case of one Appalachian community's struggle with Perfluorooctanoic Acid in order to highlight these multilevel actions and contribute to the exposure experience concept. It finds that the exposure experience is an information driven process which forms a cycle of understanding development and response such that each new action or information source can bring new meaning and new response actions. Based on this finding it is argued that research into cases of human chemical contamination need a longitudinal component in order to better capture the complexity and on-going nature of the exposure experience.