Perceptions of hazardous waste incineration risks : focus group findings.

Reprinted from Sociological Spectrum; Vol. 13, no. 1; p. 153-173

Reprint

Reducing the volume of hazardous industrial and agricultural chemical wastes produced - "waste minimization" - does not eliminate the need to safely treat, store, and dispose of what wastes remain. Two basic technological alternatives are available for waste disposal: burying it in the ground and burning it. In the local context of an incinerator siting study that has focused mainly on market effects attributable to public perceptions of incinerator risks, individual and focus group interviews with metropolitan and exurban area participants reveal a range of popular theories regarding technological legitimacy. General acknowledgment of the problem, that hazardous wastes must be disposed of safely, leads people to consider the role of landfill and incineration technology in solving this problem. The appropriateness of waste disposal technology appears to have as much to do with who designed it and who operates it - how we decide whether they are competent, whether we think they have sufficient incentives (or sanctions) to look beyond their own narrowly defined interests - as it does with the instrumental efficacy of the landfill or incineration technology. Ethnographic inquiry suggests that people often derive information they consider relevant to their risk judgments not by actively seeking out such information, but from a wide range of sources in the course of routine efforts to stay informed or entertained. In testing the accuracy of growers' predictions about how consumers will likely respond to the proposed incinerator, our inquiry found that there are very few foods that people associate with a particular locale. It also found that, even among people who have an above-average interest in the safety of their food, there is wide-ranging diversity in the specific threats to food safety about which they choose to be especially vigilant.