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We evaluated the short-term effects of transportation on efficacy beliefs and risk perceptions after exposure to a climate change documentary. Data were collected in randomized laboratory ( N = 624) and online ( N = 1,391) experiments. Participants watched one episode of Years of Living Dangerously or a control video. Regression analyses assessed whether narrative transportation and/or political affiliation were predictive of outcomes. Transportation and political affiliation were significantly associated with efficacy beliefs and risk perceptions ( p < .001). A significant transportation by political party interaction for efficacy beliefs ( p < .01) and risk perceptions (p < .01) indicated that cross-party differences could be mitigated by higher levels of transportation.

We used qualitative in-depth interviews to evaluate the effects of a mass media climate change program on audiences’ efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, emotional responses, and motivations and intentions to address climate change. We conducted in-depth interviews with 73 participants from five US cities and three political parties who had watched episodes of the documentary television series, Season Two of Years of Living Dangerously. Eligible participants completed an in-depth interview within 24 h of viewing a select episode. Data were transcribed and then coded and analyzed using QSR NVivo 10. Weak efficacy beliefs limited intentions to enact concrete behavioral change. Outcome expectations, national-level actions, imagery, and emotional responses to stories played an important role in these processes. Explicit information about expected outcomes of various actions, and specifically successes, should be provided in order to boost efficacy and incentivize behavior.

The courts have played a central role in climate policy, including the landmark Supreme Court case that led to the mandatory regulation of greenhouse gases by the United States. A wide variety of litigants have used the courts to affect policy outcomes at all scales. Therefore, to understand how the court addresses climate change is critical. Here we constructed and analysed a database of all the United State domestic climate lawsuits 1990–2016 (873), and collected qualitative data in the form of 78 in-depth interviews with litigants, involved scientists and advocates. We find proregulation litigants tend to win renewable energy and energy efficiency cases, and more frequently lose coal-fired power plant cases. Strategies such as the use of climate science and other science as well as collaboration in specific types of coalitions affect the outcomes of cases. Efforts to affect climate policy should consider these trends and outcomes. Climate issues are increasingly being presented before the courts, with both pro- and anti-regulation litigants aiming to affect policy outcomes. Analysis of domestic US climate lawsuits and interview data reveals the type of case and the strategies that succeed.

Climate change threatens the health of urban residents in many ways. This qualitative study aims to understand how six U.S. cities are considering health adaptation when responding to climate change; 65 semistructured interviews were conducted with salient stakeholders across six U.S. cities (Boston, Massachusetts; Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon; Raleigh, North Carolina; Tampa, Florida; and Tucson, Arizona), and transcripts were analyzed to identify common themes. Each city’s (or county’s) most recent climate action plan was also analyzed. This study found that interviewees’ ability to understand the connection between climate and health was a major determinant for health adaptation implementation. In addition, institutional fragmentation in governance made it difficult to incorporate health concerns into broader climate planning. However, cross-sectoral collaborations and considerations of health cobenefits were shown to help overcome these barriers. These findings offer valuable insight regarding how policy makers and practitioners can safeguard public health from the effects of climate change.

Localized vulnerability assessments are critical to effective climate adaptation. However, the differences between how local decision-makers and experts see vulnerability have not yet been fully explored, especially in the United States. Seeing possible distinctions between these approaches is critical since it is necessary to ensure a comprehensive, accountable approach. This research explores the distinct approach of local stakeholders to conceptualizing climate vulnerability in six American cities. Sixty-five interviews of cross-sectoral local stakeholders were conducted in: Boston (MA), Los Angeles (CA), Portland (OR), Raleigh (NC), and Tampa (FL). Findings demonstrate that conceptualizations of vulnerability are affected by intellectual frameworks that tend to orient around infrastructure and human health; that retrospective and prospective thinking are inter-related and affect one another; and that institutionalized forms and biases are critical. These factors shape the way that vulnerability is conceived differently than traditional expert frameworks.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme heat events. These events affect cities in increasingly abrupt and catastrophic ways; yet, many of the deaths caused by exposure to heat have gone unnoticed or are inaccurately identified, resulting in a lack of urgency in addressing this issue. We aim to address this under-identification of deaths from heat waves in order to better assess heat risk. We investigated death records in New York City from 2010 to 2012 to identify characteristics that vary between deaths officially categorized as caused by heat wave exposure (oHDs) and those possibly caused by heat (pHDs). We found that oHDs were more often black and of a younger age than would typically be expected. We also found that there was a lack of evidence to substantiate that an oHD had occurred, using the NYC official criteria. We conclude that deaths from heat waves are not being accurately recorded, leading to a mis-estimation. Training regarding the collection and interpretation of evidence may improve preparedness for heat events.

Increases in extreme record-breaking daily precipitation events have accompanied warming temperatures causing increased flooding in many areas of the World, but are not well documented for arid and semi-arid regions. In semi-arid Mongolia where warming has been over 2o C from 1940 to 2008, nomadic herders described their concerns over an increase in the number of hot days and a shift from multi-day gentle rains to heavy rains lasting less than one hour that damage their pastures, animals, gers and people, suggesting a transition from stratiform rains to convective storms. The brief intense rains are not seen in daily precipitation data typically reported by meteorological stations, and here the correlation between fine-scale rainfall readings and thunderstorm activity were used to hind cast brief heavy rains. From 2008 to 2012, an automated weather station in Dalbay Valley at Lake Hovsgol, Mongolia, recording at 5-min intervals, detected at least 40 heavy sub-daily summer rains each lasting less than 40 min. Heavy rains in Dalbay were correlated with thunderstorm activity and were 2.5 times more likely to occur when thunderstorms were reported within the previous 24 h at the Hatgal meteorological station (80 km to the southwest of Dalbay) than when no thunderstorms were reported. Daily thunderstorm frequency, recorded at nearby meteorological stations from 1960 to 2012, has increased and thus supports herders’ perceptions that the frequency of the short heavy rains have increased.

Objectives. To examine how the courts, which play a critical role in shaping public policy, consider public health in climate change and coal-fired power plant lawsuits. Methods. We coded US local, state, and federal court decisions relating to climate change and coal-fired power plants from 1990 to 2016 (n = 873) and qualitatively investigated 139 cases in which litigants raised issues concerning the health impacts of climate change. We also conducted 78 interviews with key litigants, advocates, industry representatives, advising scientists, and legal experts. Results. Health has been a critical consideration in key climate lawsuits, but in a minority of cases. Litigants have presented health arguments most frequently and effectively in terms of airborne exposures. Health impacts have typically been used to gain standing and argue that the evidence for government actions is insufficient. Conclusions. The courts represent a pivotal branch of government in shaping climate policy. Increasing inclusion of health concerns in emergent areas of litigation could help drive more effective climate policymaking.

Climate change and extreme weather events are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in the United States. The social factors that drive cities to adapt to and/or prepare for these impacts are largely unknown. Sixty-five qualitative interviews were conducted with multi-sectoral decision-makers to assess factors driving adaptation in six cities across the United States: Tucson, Arizona; Tampa, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; and Los Angeles, California. We find that there are three type of factors that affect adaptation: (1) swing—characteristics of or events within localities that can lead toward or away from action; (2) inhibitors—ways of thinking and framing climate change available to decision-makers that slow, but do not necessarily stop change; and (3) resource catalysts—types of information and moral grounding that provide a rationale for change. These factors often intersect such that swing factors are only influential in cities with some political acceptance of climate change. In cities where public acceptance of climate change is slowly shifting, resource catalysts are more influential. This is the first qualitative study of climate change adaptation in American cities.

This paper focuses on the role of the formal response community's use of social media and crowdsourcing for emergency managers (EMs) in disaster planning, response and recovery in the United States. In-depth qualitative interviews with EMs on the Eastern seaboard at the local, state and federal level demonstrate that emergency management tools are in a state of transition--from formal, internally regulated tools for crisis response to an incorporation of new social media and crowdsourcing tools. The first set of findings provides insight into why many EMs are not using social media, and describes their concerns that result in fear, uncertainty and doubt. Second, this research demonstrates how internal functioning and staffing issues within these agencies present challenges. This research seeks to examine the dynamics of this transition and offer lessons for how to improve its outcomes--critical to millions of people across the United States.

Whereas the executive and legislative branches are the principal repositories of policy-making authority in the United States, decisions in the judicial branch have and promise to continue having an influence on activities responsible for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy development, and a wide range of other government policy. The courts are a central avenue for development of climate-related policy in the United States. Yet we know few details about whether and how climate science plays a role in such judicial responses. We suggest that the role of science is changing, that novel legal theories are emerging, and that litigation is likely to continue to increase.

Climate change will increasingly affect the health of vulnerable populations, including maternal and fetal health. This systematic review aims to identify recent literature that investigates increasing heat and extreme temperatures on pregnancy outcomes globally. We identify common research findings in order to create a comprehensive understanding of how immediate effects will be sustained in the next generation. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guide, we systematically reviewed articles from PubMed and Cochrane Reviews. We included articles that identify climate change-related exposures and adverse health effects for pregnant women. There is evidence that temperature extremes adversely impact birth outcomes, including, but not limited to: changes in length of gestation, birth weight, stillbirth, and neonatal stress in unusually hot temperature exposures. The studies included in this review indicate that not only is there a need for further research on the ways that climate change, and heat in particular, may affect maternal health and neonatal outcomes, but that uniform standards for assessing the effects of heat on maternal fetal health also need to be established.

Understanding the political economic drivers of energy planning in the Brazilian Amazon is critical since the forest is increasingly vulnerable to destruction and related, increased poverty. This chapter investigates how political economy affects biomass and hydroelectricity development in that region. It focuses on political economy as characterized by: (1) the needs and agenda of local communities, (2) economic interests and politics at the national level, and (3) international social actors and financial interests. Findings advance our understanding of the political economy of renewable energy by first, focusing on a critical global resource, and second, by implementing a multi-scalar framework that also considers impacts and drivers of climate change.

Extreme heat events (EHEs) are becoming more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in the 21st century. These events can disproportionately impact the health of low-income, minority, and urban populations. To better understand heat-related intervention strategies used by four U.S. cities, we conducted 73 semi-structured interviews with government and non-governmental organization leaders representing public health, general social services, emergency management, meteorology, and the environmental planning sectors in Detroit, MI; New York City, NY; Philadelphia, PA and Phoenix, AZ—cities selected for their diverse demographics, climates, and climate adaptation strategies. We identified activities these leaders used to reduce the harmful effects of heat for residents in their city, as well as the obstacles they faced and the approaches they used to evaluate these efforts. Local leaders provided a description of how local context (e.g., climate, governance and city structure) impacted heat preparedness. Despite the differences among study cities, political will and resource access were critical to driving heat-health related programming. Upon completion of our interviews, we convened leaders in each city to discuss these findings and their ongoing efforts through day-long workshops. Our findings and the recommendations that emerged from these workshops could inform other local or national efforts towards preventing heat-related morbidity and mortality.

Changes in atmosphere and temperature are affecting multiple environmental indicators from extreme heat events to global air quality. Workers will be uniquely affected by climate change, and the occupational impacts of major shifts in atmospheric and weather conditions need greater attention. Climate change-related exposures most likely to differentially affect workers in the USA and globally include heat, ozone, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, other chemicals, pathogenic microorganisms, vector-borne diseases, violence, and wildfires. Epidemiologic evidence documents a U-, J-, or V-shaped relationship between temperature and mortality. Whereas heat-related morbidity and mortality risks are most evident in agriculture, many other outdoor occupational sectors are also at risk, including construction, transportation, landscaping, firefighting, and other emergency response operations. The toxicity of chemicals change under hyperthermic conditions, particularly for pesticides and ozone. Combined with climate-related changes in chemical transport and distribution, these interactions represent unique health risks specifically to workers. Links between heat and interpersonal conflict including violence require attention because they pose threats to the safety of emergency medicine, peacekeeping and humanitarian relief, and public safety professionals. Recommendations for anticipating how US workers will be most susceptible to climate change include formal monitoring systems for agricultural workers; modeling scenarios focusing on occupational impacts of extreme climate events including floods, wildfires, and chemical spills; and national research agenda setting focusing on control and mitigation of occupational susceptibility to climate change.

Understanding the political economic drivers of energy planning in the Brazilian Amazon is critical since the forest is increasingly vulnerable to destruction and related, increased poverty. This research investigates how political economy affects biomass and hydroelectricity development in that region. It focuses on political economy as characterized by: 1) the needs and agenda of local communities, 2) economic interests and politics at the national level, and 3) international social actors and financial interests.Findings advance our understanding of the political economy of renewable energy by first, focusing on a critical global resource, and second, by implementing a multi-scalar framework that also considers impacts and drivers of climate change.

In this article we use the case of the West Nile virus (WNV) to investigate the social construction of public health emergencies (PHEs) and the subsequent changes in public health governance that they instigate. Informed by medical sociological literature on the social construction of illness, science and technology studies, and risk and disaster literature, we create a conceptual framework for connecting health and crisis. Our investigation of the WNV analyses PHEs as brief, but vitally important, moments in which a 'crisis' is co-constructed between states, affected populations and disease vectors. In these moments of crisis new interventions are enacted, which have long-term effects for institutional structures and disease management. Using extensive qualitative data collection, we conceptualise two mechanisms that underlie the declaration of PHEs and the expansion of related 'emergencies' across space and time: (i) crisis interventions that have the potential to marginalise the interaction of citizens with state institutions and (ii) institutional rearrangement of state agencies stemming from the original crisis issue, resulting in altered networks and institutional practices and drawing heavily upon the crisis as a symbol of similar, future public health threats.

Background The Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project was the first federally funded study of environmental causes of breast cancer. Although advocates were expected to participate in this study, the details of their participation were not adequately clarified in project guidelines, which resulted in confusion over their role in the project. The Breast Cancer and Environment Research Centers (BCERCs) are funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute; these centers continue to conduct research into environmental links to breast cancer and to clarify advocate–scientist guidelines for collaboration. Objectives Practitioners in community-based participatory research (CBPR) are grappling with how to improve CBPR projects for all groups involved in breast cancer and environmental studies. The ever-growing body of literature on CBPR elaborates on a number of factors that make CBPR particularly challenging, specifically regarding partnerships between advocate and scientific communities. This study draws on CBPR principles to evaluate advocate–scientist collaboration in the BCERCs. Methods We conducted surveys at BCERC annual meetings in 2005 and 2007 and 11 in-depth open-ended interviews with key stakeholders such as primary investigators within the centers to assess the perceptions of the advocates and scientists regarding collaboration between advocates and scientists who were engaged in CBPR studies. Results We found that although participatory guidelines were a focus of BCERCs, underlying differences between advocates and scientists with regard to paradigms of scientific inquiry, priorities, and desired outcomes need to be addressed for more effective collaboration to take place. Conclusion Our findings contribute to the broader CBPR literature by highlighting the role of underlying assumptions that may hinder the collaborative process and suggest the need for continued assessment research into participatory research projects on breast cancer and the environment.

Growing contestation has arisen in the Brazilian Amazon regarding two proposed large hydroelectric dam complexes: Belo Monte and Rio Madeira. I explore the intersections between transnational and local contestation of these projects over time. I specifically focus on how scientific research and technical assessments are the field upon which these two different levels of activism operate, reflecting the importance of democracy in science and public involvement therein. I argue that the types of knowledge-based claims activists make and the political constrictions in which they work differentiate transnational and local claims. These cases address questions about the interaction of local and transnational organizers and how highly charged symbolic environmental resources are protected or developed as an outcome of movement struggles. This study also emphasizes the need to recognize hydrological resource development as an aspect of Amazonian development, especially as national and transnational demands for e...

The Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI) was one of the first movements to translate expert knowledge to the public. It was led by “politico-scientists” who meant to advance an ethics of science by contributing to public understanding. Since then, citizens have taken research into their own hands, using it to frame issues, challenge corporate practices, and change policy. Movement methods that respond to consistent activist concerns about science are reflected in “democratizing science movements” (DSMs) that have grown, expanded, and changed in the past 50 years. This article compares the CNI to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a group of organizations that have critiqued the hazardous ingredients in personal care products. The aim is to update our understanding of how movements use science to protect health and improve the environment since the CNI. Like CNI, Campaign activists have used science to educate the public about hazardous exposures; however, the Campaign reflects that over time, lay people have become more central to scientific production as well as more able to use it without the assistance of experts. It is argued that in Commoner's time scientists focused on translating results and meanings for lay audiences whereas today, movements use science to heighten the political nature of the issue through reframing.

This paper develops a framework for understanding social movements that address issues related to science, technology and expert knowledge. `Democratizing science movements' contest, reframe, and engage in the production of official scientific research in order to achieve their goals. They contest the seeming objectivity and neutrality of science and seek to legitimate lay perspectives. In order to empirically explore why such movements arise and how they work, I discuss two cases: the anti-dam movement in Brazil and the environmental breast cancer movement in the USA. While there are obvious internal and contextual differences between these two movements, they both exemplify similar characteristics of democratizing science movements. In this sense, these cases are representative of a broader, transnational phenomenon. Qualitative data in the form of interviews, ethnographic observations and document collection were used to study these cases.

This paper examines the governance of hydroelectric dam planning in Brazil with a particular focus on two factors: first, governmental institutions that aim to provide participatory mechanisms for civil society, and second, new participatory institutions created by civil society to remedy the lack of meaningful participatory measures. One example of the latter are new collaborative research projects, which have changed dam building policies and governmental thinking about participation. It is argued here that these kinds of collaboration are fundamental to making dam-building policy more accountable to local citizens. The analysis demonstrates that lay/expert collaborations provide pathways through which affected people can contest inaccurate official scientific reports, in turn influencing the policy process. I examine six such participatory projects across the country: four are nationally based and two are international in scope. A four-pronged typology is used to analyse the processes and outcomes of these collaborations. This typology reveals multiple types of knowledge-sharing that constitute concrete means to implement participation in environmental policy, hence advancing the democratisation of environmental governance.

The intensifying effects of climate change and the growing concentration of population in hazardous locations mean that, for many communities, disasters are increasingly becoming not only foreseeable, but inevitable. While much attention is, and should be, focused on what these foreseeable disasters require in terms of disaster planning and mitigation, attention should also be focused on a related and equally pressing phenomena: mismanagement of disaster response, particularly as climate proves an increasing stressor. Like disasters themselves, disaster mismanagement - while not entirely predictable - may exhibit some predictable patterns. This chapter explores past disaster management failures, considers how climate change may alter or exacerbate certain response pathologies, and evaluates some potential remedies that might mitigate these challenges. Keywords: Foreseeable disaster response mismanagement, climate change Language: en

The environmental movement has often contested and reshaped scientific knowledge to achieve its goals. However, theorists have yet to account for this social movement tactic. This research uses a case study of the anti-dam movement in Brazil, with particular reference to three instances of anti-dam activism across the country, to delineate how scientization of the state motivates environmental movements to contest science. It uses Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action to explicate how instrumental and communicative claims are deliberated on in collaborations between activists and researchers, resulting in new scientific conceptualizations. These results are then translated to the public through innovative movement frames. This research helps situate communicative action as a social movement strategy important in a global knowledge society.

There are challenges to the dominant research paradigm in breast cancer science. In the United States, science and social activism create paradigmatic shifts. Using interviews, ethnographic observations, and an extensive review of the literature, we create a three-dimensional model to situate changes in scientific controversy concerning environmental causes of breast cancer. We identify three paradigm challenges posed by activists and some scientists: (1) to move debates about causation upstream to address causes; (2) to shift emphasis from individual to modifiable societal-level factors beyond an individual’s control; and (3) to allow direct lay involvement in research, which may raise new questions and change how questions are approached, the methods used, and the standards of proof. We use our model to examine controversies about doing scientific research, interpreting scientific results, and acting on science. Ultimately, we aim to understand what impedes construction of new methodologies and knowledge about environmental factors in human disease.

STEPHEN ZAVESTOSKI, SABRINA McCORMICK ANDPHIL BROWNAs developed and developing societies increasingly alter their naturalenvironments by introducing chemical and other industrial by-prod-ucts, disease-based social movements aiming to link various diseasesto environmental causes are becoming more common. The burdenof scientific proof, among other factors, poses a significant challengeto these movements. We illustrate how gender identity serves both toconstrain and enable activists in the environmental breast cancermovement (EBCM). We highlight how the EBCM’s attempt toemphasize possible environmental causes of breast cancer forces themovement to challenge the medical and popular explanations ofbreast cancer—what we call the dominant epidemiologicalparadigm—that point to personal lifestyle and genetics. The conceptof the dominant epidemiological paradigm provides an analyticalframework for exploring how gender concerns are central to environ-mental breast cancer activists’ efforts to link breast cancer to en-vironmental causes. It also provides a framework to see how genderdiscrimination gets institutionalized, and how activists respond tothat institutionalized discrimination by employing tactics that oftencentre on gender-based issues.The dominant epidemiological paradigm of breast cancer, whichis largely supported by the mainstream breast cancer movement,focuses on individual-level approaches to stopping breast cancer.

Public involvement in health program planning has been taking place for many years, and has provided a precedent for the emergence of public involvement in research conducted since the early 1990s. Such involvement is now widely seen in breast cancer research, due to the large public concern and major social movement activity. This article reviews current practices and general models of public involvement in research and constructs a prototype. The authors interviewed researchers, program officers, and laypeople in order to understand the obstacles, processes, and benefits. They conclude that public involvement has major ramifications for the democratization of science and the construction of knowledge by teaching lay people about science and sensitizing researchers to concerns of the public. There is growing support on the part of scientists and government agents for public involvement.

We examine Gulf War illnesses—which include the fatigue, joint pain, dermatitis, headaches, memory loss, blurred vision, diarrhea, and other symptoms reported by Gulf War veterans—in relation to other medically unexplained physical symptoms such as multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia. Our intent is to examine the diagnosis negotiations involved in these mysterious diseases, by showing the different forms of legitimacy involved in such interactions. Factors involved in diagnostic legitimacy are: diagnostic legitimacy in the medical community, lay acceptance of the diagnosis, uncertainty in looking for causes, and social mobilization. We conclude by noting that research may not be able to find any cause for these diseases/conditions; hence, it may be necessary to embrace medical uncertainty, and also to accept patient experience in order to facilitate diagnosis, treatment, and recovery process. Such a change can alter patients’ expectations and taken-for-granted assumptions about medicine, and perhaps in turn reduce the frequency with which dissatisfied individuals form illness groups that mobilize to challenge what they see as an unresponsive medical system.

This study examines the growing debate around environmental causes of asthma in the context of federal regulatory disputes, scientific controversy, and environmental justice activism. A multifaceted form of social discovery of the effect of air pollution on asthma has resulted from multipartner and multiorganizational approaches and from intersectoral policy that deals with social inequality and environmental justice. Scientists, activists, health voluntary organizations, and some government agencies and officials have identified various elements of the asthma and air pollution connection. To tackle these issues, they have worked through a variety of collaborations and across different sectors of environmental regulation, public health, health services, housing, transportation, and community development. The authors examine the role of activist groups in discovering the increased rates of asthma and framing it as a social and environmental issue; give an overview of the current knowledge base on air pollution and asthma, and the controversies within science; and situate that science in the regulatory debate, discussing the many challenges to the air quality researchers. They then examine the implications of the scientific and regulatory controversies over linking air pollution to increases in asthma. The article concludes with a discussion of how alliances between activists and scientists lead to new research strategies and innovations.

This paper introduces the concept of “boundary movements” to characterize the distinctive growth and strategies of movements involving citizen/science alliances to contend with environmentally related illnesses. This concept is applied to a case study of the environmental breast cancer movement, which has induced changes in treatment options and public perception of breast cancer. Since the early 1990s, a segment of this movement has consistently criticized the traditional paradigms governing research, the epistemology of breast cancer, and popular understandings. Against the traditional focus on genetics, lifestyles, and personal responsibility, this segment's broader messages stress environmental causation and women's participation in science and politics.

Given the growing concern with breast cancer as a largely unexplained and common illness of our time, we would expect considerable print media coverage. An accurate portrayal of breast cancer would also include a good amount of attention to the potential environmental factors since many women with breast cancer and activists are pointing to such potential causes. Our examination of daily newspapers, newsweeklies, science periodicals, and women’s magazines showed that there was little coverage of possible environmental causation. There was also scant attention paid to corporate and governmental responsibility. Articles often focused on individual responsibility for diet, age at birth of first child, and other personal behaviours. Articles also emphasised genetic causation, even though this explained only a small fraction of breast cancer incidence. These factors combine to place personal responsibility on women for preventing the disease. Despite gains in understanding possible environmental causation and much scientific dialogue about it, especially in light of the endocrine disrupter hypothesis, and despite growing social activism, the print media have not paid much attention to environmental causation of breast cancer. Because the media have significant influence over public understanding and social action, this lack of attention may hold back scientific and activist pursuit of environmental causes of breast cancer.

In light of increasing recent media attention on climate change and global warming, heat-related mortality has become a much more visible public health concern. In the United States, heat is responsible for more fatal events than all other weather events combined.(1) Investigating and quantifying heat-related mortality has been done through two very different approaches. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 17, 2015: e1-e2. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302848). Language: en

In this article we use the case of the West Nile virus (WNV) to investigate the social construction of public health emergencies (PHEs) and the subsequent changes in public health governance that they instigate. Informed by medical sociological literature on the social construction of illness, science and technology studies, and risk and disaster literature, we create a conceptual framework for connecting health and crisis. Our investigation of the WNV analyses PHEs as brief, but vitally important, moments in which a 'crisis' is co-constructed between states, affected populations and disease vectors. In these moments of crisis new interventions are enacted, which have long-term effects for institutional structures and disease management. Using extensive qualitative data collection, we conceptualise two mechanisms that underlie the declaration of PHEs and the expansion of related 'emergencies' across space and time: (i) crisis interventions that have the potential to marginalise the interaction of citizens with state institutions and (ii) institutional rearrangement of state agencies stemming from the original crisis issue, resulting in altered networks and institutional practices and drawing heavily upon the crisis as a symbol of similar, future public health threats.

Purpose – This research explores how social movement activists work to influence the framing of oil spill impacts, and related scientific and political processes. It focuses on the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB), an environmental justice organization that has worked in the Gulf Coast, and looks particularly at the experience of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Design/methodology – Research is based on qualitative interviews, ethnographic observations, and video data with local social movement organizations, grassroots groups, spill workers, fishermen, local residents, scientists, and government representatives during three time periods, in 2010 within five months of the spill, Fall of 2011, and Summer of 2012. Findings – Legal institutional constrictions inherent in official oil spill assessments and cleanup processes fostered a transformation in activist tactics and the communities they seek to represent. Originality/value of the paper – Social movement activism has not often been studied in response to an oil spill. This chapter demonstrates how such an event shapes activism, and how activism has an effect on local responses to the event.

Disasters are most acutely experienced at the local level (high agreement, robust evidence). The reality of disasters in terms of loss of life and property occurs in local places and to local people. These localized impacts can then cascade to have national and international consequences. In this chapter, local refers to a range of places, social groupings, experience, management, institutions, conditions, and sets of knowledge that exist at a sub-national scale. [5.1] Developing strategies for disaster risk management in the context of climate change requires a range of approaches, informed by and customized to specific local circumstances (high agreement, robust evidence). These differences and the context (national to global, urban to rural) in which they are situated shape local vulnerability and local impacts. [5.1] The impacts of climate extremes and weather events may threaten human security at the local level (high agreement, medium evidence). Vulnerability at the local level is attributed to social, political, and economic conditions and drivers including localized environmental degradation and climate change. Addressing disaster risk and climate extremes at the local level requires attention to much wider issues relating to sustainable development. [5.1] While structural measures provide some protection from disasters, they may also create a false sense of safety (high agreement, robust evidence). Such measures result in increased property development, heightened population density, and more disaster exposure. Current regulations and design levels for structural measures may be inadequate under conditions of climate change.

This chapter assesses how countries are managing current and projected disaster risks, given knowledge of how risks are changing with observations and projections of weather and climate extremes, vulnerability and exposure, and impacts. It focuses on the design of national systems for managing such risks, the roles played by actors involved in the system, and the functions they perform, acknowledging that complementary actions to manage risks are also taken at local and international level.