The methodological challenge of talking about chemical violence
Thus far, I have followed lines of, broadly framed, molecular and structural analysis of atrazine and pesticides, more generally. The molecular analysis in Chapter 2 was based on biochemical and epidemiological sources to explore the effects of the herbicide, 1-Chloro-3-ethylamino-5-isopropylamino- 2,4,6-triazine. In this analysis, I was careful to select only the most rigorous and well-grounded scientific studies to methodically unpack its biochemical trajectory. The objective here was clear – to review scientific papers and interpret what they mean for atrazine’s existence in various contexts. In the molecular analysis, the content primarily includes data such as persistence values in a variety of mediums, lethal doses and concentrations, bioaccumulation and what this means for ecosystems, weighted hazardous potential algorithms, hormone disruption likelihood and carcinogenic potential. The data exists in measurables values with common units comparable across studies in methodologically equivalent disciplines. In the structural analysis which followed in Chapter 3, the disciplines in conversation also largely shared a common discourse. The primarily political economic analysis involves data including regulations and legislation, the influence political alliances, culminations of a capitalist industry and various regulatory landscapes, and the real-world results and effects of political decisions.
This chapter on violence attempts to bring these different disciplinary vantages into conversation, attending to the question of how to go about understanding the harm caused by atrazine. Following Murphy’s (2013) idea of chemical violence and Nixon’s (2011) concept of slow violence, can and should atrazine’s effects be considered a form of violence? Determining the boundaries of social and political science concepts such as slow violence and structural violence by quantities of chemical residues is discursively challenging. Does slow violence begin when atrazine is found at 0.1 ppb or 1 ppb or at 100 ppb for a day or a week or a decade? It is uncommon for concepts such as slow violence (Nixon, 2011) or structural violence (Gultang, 1990) or chemical violence (Murphy, 2013) to have such numerical endpoints. In fact, such sociological and anthropological concepts often critique the bounded and static nature of statistical endpoints. Situated in a different discipline, it would be unusual and perhaps even discursively inappropriate to find an argument on violence in a scientific journal paper about herbicide concentrations in marine biota. The project of this chapter is to nimbly traverse disciplinary registers, weaving rigorous scientific findings into insightful social science concepts. The primary inquiry of this chapter is to ask how to best understand atrazine’s harmful effects. As atrazine in isolation is an inanimate
46 molecule, its harm relies on systems and practices to enact it. In attending to the above inquiry of how to understand atrazine’s effects, this chapter ask what these systems and practices are and how they work synergistically, even if unintentionally, to enable and reinforce harm.
The harm inflicted by atrazine, and similarly common but toxic chemicals, often goes under-represented and acknowledged. Their chronic degradation to ecosystems and prolonged exposure to humans does not carry the spectacle of a major disaster. As the global media cycles increasingly shocking and frequent instances of epidemics, extreme weather events, and wars, there is a growing need for the acknowledgement of more gradual but equally concerning forms of degradation. Even ecological disasters such as the UPL fire and chemical spill were quickly forgotten in public media, with the exception of the persistent Daily Maverick and Groundup journalists. The reality of a chronic chemical violence, that will continue to be in effect decades after the perpetrating chemicals are banned, is convoluted and simply not click-bait. To capture these geographically and temporally dispersed, unevenly distributed and quickly forgotten periods of harm, Nixon’s (2011) concept of slow violence is valuable.
Nixon’s concept defines a violence that occurs gradually, often obscured from visibility, and “typically not viewed as violence at all” (Nixon, 2011: 2). Slow violence is an attritional process, and Nixon (2011: 3) notes that it “can fuel long-term, proliferating conflicts in situations where the conditions for sustaining life become increasingly but gradually degraded.” The nature of ‘conflicts’ range from the more mundane yet violent experiences of dispossession and injury in war to political conflicts between state entities and communities where uneven distribution of power results in perpetual avoidance of accountability. Nixon (2011: 3) argues, in thinking with slow violence, “that we complicate conventional assumptions about violence as a highly visible act that is newsworthy because it is event focused, time bound, and body bound.” One of the aims of this thesis is to reckon with the challenge of accurately representing the complex and sometimes contradictory science underpinning a violence such as chronic toxic exposure. It is an essential challenge to ensure that chronic chemical violence is not reduced to individualised events, removed from the broader facilitating structures (Shadaan and Murphy, 2020). Working with data of atrazine presence in South Africa, the concept of chemical infrastructure (Murphy, 2013) enables an analysis of how and why atrazine exposure is a form of violence.
Atrazine in marine environments
47 Research conducted by Ojemaye et al., (2020; 2020a) explored the presence of five herbicides in two coastal sites on either side of Cape Town’s peninsula. From the popular tourist beach, Camps Bay, samples were tested from sea water, beach sand, marine sediment, and various marine organisms. Although concentrations of atrazine in sea water were at 2 ng/L (0,002 ppb), well below any internationally stipulated guidelines (of freshwater concentrations), the levels increased substantially in other mediums.
Atrazine was found at 10 ng/g (10 ppb) and 20 ng/g in beach sand and marine sediment respectively (Ojemaye et al., 2020). For illustrative purposes, for every cubic meter of beach sand on Camps Bay beach, which holds approximately 50 billion grains of sand, there will be the equivalent of 550 ‘grains’ of atrazine, and over 2000 ‘grains’ of the four other herbicides tested. In seaweeds and sea urchins, atrazine ranged from 20 to 40 ng/g and from 40 to 60 ng/g in limpets and mussels. This shows a significant tendency of atrazine to bioaccumulate (Ojemaye et al., 2020). The herbicide is stored in organic tissue and thus while levels in seawater are low, the concentrations increase exponentially in marine organisms at higher trophic levels.
Research by Ojemaye et al., (2020a) explores herbicide concentrations in various parts of four commonly consumed fish from Kalk Bay, Cape Town and the associated hazardous potential. Atrazine was found in the fillet, liver, gills, and intestines of four species of fish in concentrations ranging from 22 to 66 ng/g.
The acute and chronic risk quotient calculated for all four fish for due to atrazine exposure is considered high under USEPA guidelines (2022). Furthermore, the carcinogenic risk of consuming of all four fish types was considered high under USEPA guidelines (2011) (Ojemaye et al., 2020a). Limits for pesticide waste concentrations only exist in South Africa’s Drinking Water Guidelines (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, 1996) and certain crops on which atrazine is used (Department of National Health and Population Development, 1994; Department of Health, 2020). While atrazine’s tendency to bioaccumulate has been noted in South Africa’s Drinking Water Guidelines (1996), there are no procedures to follow up on concentration levels in exposed organisms and determine their effects. This is especially the case in marine environments, for which no South African guidelines for pesticide residues exist. The data from Ojemaye et al., (2020; 2020a) also only represents a comparatively miniscule proportion of identified and suspected toxic substances in marine environments in an equally small proportion of marine organisms. The scale of chemical waste from the agrochemical and pharmaceutical industries would suggest an enormous chemical pollution problem of largely unknown parameters.
Furthermore, the compound effects of multiple pesticides and other common chemical waste, such as pharmaceuticals, are largely unknown. The scale and embedded nature of chemical pollution are well captured by Murphy’s (2013) concept of chemical infrastructure. An interpretation of how this toxic
48 proliferation is woven into societal organisation will be presented. This will be followed by an analysis of its violence.
Infrastructures of violence
Chemical infrastructure is a concept which attempts to capture the scale of chemical pollution through the ways it is embedded materially and institutionally. In a material sense, Murphy describes chemical infrastructure as
“the spatial and temporal distributions of industrially produced chemicals as they are produced and consumed, and as they become mobile in the atmosphere, settle into landscapes, travel in water ways, leach from commodities, are regulated (or not) by states, monitored by experts, engineered by industries, absorbed by bodies, metabolized physiologically, and as they bioaccumulate in food [chains], break down over time, or persist” (2013: 1).
While this may be the more identifiable form of chemical infrastructure, the concept highlights the chemical infrastructure of everyday institutional practices. Murphy writes,
“By infrastructure I mean more than the physical structures of waterways and pipelines. I use infrastructure to name the spatially and temporally extensive ways that practices are sedimented into and structure the world. Thus, a capacious sense of infrastructures includes social sedimentations such as colonial legacies, the repetition of gendered norms in material culture, or the persistence of racialization.”
(Murphy, 2013: 1).
There are structures and practices that produce and perpetuate the proliferation of atrazine and other toxic substances in ever-widening environments. From trade deals and political alliances to systemically racist labour relations, South Africa has a chemical infrastructure that is typically not viewed in the same sphere (or even discipline) as pesticide exposure. A concept that brings these geographically and temporally expansive practices into the focus of structurally violent chemical exposure is essential to comprehend the scope of chemical relations. I draw on Murphy’s (2013) concept of infrastructure to describe the physical and discursive institutions and practices that facilitate atrazine’s presence.
The use of a concept such as infrastructure to interpret how atrazine use is maintained is an important grounding for unpacking forms of violence. It facilitates a thorough analysis into the intricate web of factors that align to maintain the existence of atrazine. In committing to this form of slow and considered scholarship, I attempt to avoid sensationalising incomplete accounts and inadvertently causing harm. The
49 example of local fishers in Kalk Bay brings the intersecting layers of history and politics to bear on the importance of carefully handled research. Against the tide of Apartheid dispossession and the dwindling fish supplies due to the commercial industry, fishers in Kalk Bay maintain livelihoods based on a trade of locally caught fish. Applications for the standardised 15-year fishing licences were renewed in July 2022, with families in Kalk Bay who have been fishing for generations denied licences, putting their livelihoods at great risk (Human, 2022). Fishing communities also argued that the expensive application process unfairly favours commercial companies who, the provincial authority noted, made no complaints compared to the hundreds of appeals by small-scale fishers against the process (Human, 2022). The data of risks associated with fish consumption from Kalk Bay (Ojemaye et al., 2020a) is itself politically charged.
The data needs to be handled with care so as not to cause inadvertent harm in already precarious settings.
As the data from Camps Bay (Ojemaye et al., 2020) illustrates, toxic pollution is not an isolated issue and interventions, whether citizen-activist or government led, should be well considered rather than reactionary. Considering the slowness with which regulatory interventions occur, it is especially important to craft well-researched, thorough analyses.
Political historical context
As discussed in the Structural Analysis, South Africa’s pesticide regulations and the involvement of the agrochemical industry function to reinforce the use of chemicals such as atrazine. The 14 different legislations regulating pesticides across several government departments creates a decision-making environment through which information travels slowly and ineffectively. The opaque yet clearly present industry involvement with the pesticide registrar’s office is an additional unknown and unaccountable influence. The Fertilisers, Farm Feeds, Agricultural Remedies and Stock Remedies Act of 1947 (Department of Agriculture, 1947) remains the primary legislation for regulating pesticides. Created by the Apartheid government, it facilitated practices of racist labour exploitation supporting the industry elite. The act includes several woefully outdated regulations that undermine farm labourers’ and public health and facilitate exploitative industry practices. The maximum penalty for breaking this piece of legislation is a fine of R1000 (London, 2021). A violation would include using agrochemicals for purposes not registered, which could cause major ecosystem destruction. It is designed to protect the agriculture industry rather than environmental and human health. While legislation such as the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA, 1993) has provisions for necessary safety equipment and penalties against insufficient safety equipment provision, and storing of pesticides in incorrectly labelled or protected containers but, it is ineffective enacted.
50 Labour practices with Apartheid legacies such as brutally racist assaults (London, 2003) and incorrect labelling which recently caused the death of a farmworker’s child who thought he was drinking from a water bottle, persist (Maregele, 2016). Furthermore, in contrast to international standards such as those in the USA or EU, there is no requirement for re-evaluating existing pesticide registrations (London, 2021).
Atrazine, for example, after being registered for production and use in South Africa in the 1970s has never, and will never, under current regulations, be required to undergo re-evaluation. There are no provisions for removing a pesticide from use, even with new data demonstrating toxicity barring the court system and international treaties to which South African pesticide regulators, as discussed in the Structural Analysis, have not given priority.
While all living organisms face a continuous stream of chronic chemical exposure, farmworkers carry the biggest burden of a violent chemical infrastructure. South Africa has a violent and exploitative history of farm labour relations. In many ways the legacy of Apartheid era racism, labour exploitation, and uneven distribution of wealth has remained in the commercial agricultural sector (London, 2003). Research by South African public health specialist, Leslie London, has demonstrated low levels of access to education among commercial farmworkers, frequent instances of violent assaults and threats of violence from farm managers. In terms of employment, a significant proportion of workers are employed casually and without contracts, undermining access to labour rights (London, 2003). Payment for farmworkers in the form of alcohol, the ‘dop system’, has been well documented during the Apartheid era (Waldman, 1996; London, 1999) – a practice that has a violent legacy in the form of lasting alcoholism, domestic violence, and conditions such as foetal alcohol syndrome. Levine (2013) argued that removing the ‘dop system’ without appropriate interventions to handle alcoholism meant that many farmworkers spent a substantially larger proportion of their income on alcohol, resulting in less money spent on food and therefore increased hunger. It is a brutal legacy illustrating the slow violence where “the conditions for sustaining life become increasingly but gradually degraded” (Nixon 2011: 3).
‘Ripe with Abuse’
With the exception of organisations such as the Women on Farms Project (WFP), there is a comparatively weak presence of worker unions or NGOs which represent workers’ rights in relation to other major and occupationally hazardous industries such as mining. The organisation, Human Rights Watch conducted research into farm labourer conditions in the major wine and fruit farming region of the Western Cape, South African with the report titled an illustrative ‘Ripe with Abuse’ (Human Rights Watch, 2011). The report notes poor compliance with health and safety protection, inadequately conducted inspections, and
51 unlaw evictions (ibid). Given the frequent precarity of farmworker employment, commonly reported threats of violence by superiors, and geographical isolation, holding offending parties liable is often very challenging. The Human Rights Watch investigation reports frequent refusal by farm owners to provide necessary safety equipment to reduce or prevent pesticide exposure (2011). The report describes pesticide spraying occurring while workers are still in the fields without protective equipment, with similar practices reported by the WFP that workers are sent back into the fields directly after spraying (Human, 2022a) – both of which pose significant health risks. Pesticide exposure also occurs from spray drift from adjacent fields (Mentz-Langrange and Dabrowski, 2020) and residue on crops, and clothing for which the Human Rights Watch report (2011) notes common instances of inadequate provision of clean water and washing equipment.
Despite the Regulations for Hazardous Chemical Agents (2021, amendment to the OHSA, 1993) requiring training and adequate protection for the use of hazardous substances, The Ripe with Abuse report indicates a common lack of necessary training provided for farmworkers (Human Rights Watch, 2011).
Research by Rother (2008) has found that pesticides labels are often the primary, if not only, means of communicating risks and hazards of pesticide use to farmworkers. Approximately 50% of the farmworker participants, in a study by Rother, misunderstood or incorrectly identified symbols on the pesticide labels.
The comprehension was also gendered, with fewer women having received training correlating with lower levels of understanding (Rother, 2008). This burden on farmworkers is intensified by the fact that pesticide labels are legally binding contracts with the end user being liable to fines or imprisonment from misuse (Rother, 2005). As one might expect from poorly handled training and use of safety equipment, pesticide poisonings are not unusual.
Acute pesticide poisoning
A report from the WHO (1990) estimated 3.5 million annual acute pesticide poisonings globally based on available data, suggesting that the actual number may be substantially higher. Of those poisonings, more than 220 000 are fatal (WHO, 1990; 85). At the stage, the report flagged the disproportionate burden of pesticide poisonings, acute and chronic for occupational and public health, noting an expected increase in pesticide production. A more recent data review by Boedeker et al., (2020), using an algorithm to extrapolate from existing data, estimated 385 million cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning occur annually with 11 000 associated deaths. The cases and therefore estimates from the WHO report (1990) and Boedeker et al., (2020) are heavily weighted towards farming populations in global south regions. Both the report and review also note that underreporting is common. Pesticide poisonings in
52 South Africa are not well represented but data from an urban hospital in Cape Town provides a useful sample (Balme et al., 2010). Over a five-year period, from 2003-2008, the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital received 211 cases of acute paediatric pesticide poisonings with additional 100 asymptomatic cases7. The National Department of Health Statistics recorded 341 cases in the Western Cape over the same five-year period. Considering that the hospital only dealt with paediatric cases in an urban area indicates significant under-reporting across the province. Furthermore, only one of the six deaths recorded at the hospital appeared on the Department of Health report (Balme, et al., 2010).
Poisonings caused by pesticides are a global issue concentrated in the global south. As the EU forms increasingly stricter bans on toxic chemicals, their use and abuse on commercial agricultural farms in regions such as the Western Cape appear to become ever more isolated geographically and in public acknowledgement. The under reporting of pesticide poisonings reinforces the geopolitical isolation of farmworkers. Although there are structures to regulate pesticides, protect workers’ rights and occupational health, and requirements to report cases of poisonings, these poisonings are a prime illustration of violence “out of sight” (Nixon, 2011: 2). The protective structures provide the illusion that toxicity is controlled, reinforcing the ‘invisibility’ of the violence experienced. The inadequacy of regulations and role of the agrochemical industry in producing a chemical infrastructure which renders the violence invisible is well illustrated by the UPL chemical fire and leak in 2021
The unattainable accountability of slow violence
In July 2021, in the midst of major civil unrest, the United Phosphorous Limited (UPL) chemical warehouse in Cornubia, north of Durban, burned for 10 days. The warehouse stored over 4000 tonnes of 62 different pesticides released into the surrounding environment during the event (Airshed Atmospheric Impact Report, 2021). Emergency responses, not aware of the storehouse’s contents due to the facility’s lack of environmental authorisation, flushed many of the chemicals down the adjacent river and into the sea while extinguishing the fire. As a result of the contaminated water, over three and a half tonnes of dead fish washed ashore and several kilometres of beach north and south, and one kilometre out to sea from the river mouth was closed for recreational and harvesting use (DFFE, 2021b). A government investigation into UPL’s regulatory compliance revealed substantial contravention. The report stated that UPL was not in possession of the required Environmental Authorisation and did not obtain the critical risk assessment and planning permission required from the local municipality (DFFE, 2021b). As of August 2022, there is a
7 Paediatric in Balme et al., (2010) is considered up to six years-old