From Disposable Culture to Disposable People: Teaching About the Unintended Consequences of Plastics Tamara "Sasha" Adkins, MPH Dissertation Committee Dr. Alesia Maltz, Committee Chair Core Faculty, Environmental Studies, Antioch University New England Dr. Abigail Abrash Walton, Teaching Faculty, Environmental Studies, Antioch University New England Dr. Janaki Natarajan Tschannerl, Director, SPARK Teacher Education / Educational Praxis & Director, Bapagrama Educational Center, Bangalore, India From Disposable Culture to Disposable People: Teaching About the Unintended Consequences of Plastics By Tamara "Sasha" Adkins, DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in the Department of Environmental Studies Antioch University New England Keene, New Hampshire November 2017 Copyright 2017 Tamara “Sasha” Adkins All Rights Reserved Dedication Zendaya, To you I dedicate not only this dissertation but all my work to shape a world where no one is disposable. i Acknowledgments Alesia, my adviser and mentor for the past decade, sets a high bar for wisdom, compassion, and kindness. I will always remember you saying, "Oh, sweetie, too many sighs! If you are not having fun (with the dissertation research) then something is wrong." Thank you for not only patiently drawing out my best work, but for making the process a delightful one. Janaki, thank you for all I am learning from you in Spark and through this process. Abi joined my committee officially in my final semester, but had already been giving me encouragement and support for many years. It is much appreciated. I'd like to thank Charles Curtin, who served on my committee for a time, but due to extenuating circumstances, was not able to continue in that role. Don Woodhouse, Director of Antioch's Grants Office, helped me secure a NOAA Sea Grant for my work with methyl mercury and was a loyal and resourceful cheerleader for my project. There are hardly words to describe my reference librarian Jean Amaral. Her dedication and skill knew no bounds. Reference librarian Rachel Sperling also generously gave her time and expertise to help bring this to a close. Thanks go to Amy Janvier, our department's administrative assistant, whose sense of organization and unflappable competence I aspire to emulate. Also at Antioch, I met Steve Chase, whose integrity continues to inspire me. I am grateful to the staff of Brooks Rand Labs in Seattle, Washington who conducted the experiments with methyl mercury for me, and particularly to Michelle Briscoe who took my vague ideas and made a work plan out of them. I would like to thank my cohort: Ann, Anne, Brian, Cheryl (who was with us for too ii short a time), Dan, Dianne, Eric, Karen, Karin, Kate, Kim, Meredith, Rebecca (whose doctoral aspirations were thwarted by an unkindly monkey), and Sam. I credit my Japanese host family, the Kanayamas, with any public speaking prowess that I might at times display. My okasan (mother) entered one of my compositions in a speech contest. This was to be nationally televised (have I mentioned how much I hate being on camera) and involved speaking in Japanese, from memory, for several minutes. I was selected as a finalist. There was no getting out of it. Every morning when I came downstairs, she and otosan (father) cheered for me and made me recite my speech. If I stumbled, I had to step out of the kitchen, come back in to fresh applause, and begin again. When I succeeded, they gave me breakfast. I did not win that speech contest, but I did conquer my fear of public speaking. If okasan and otosan were still alive, I am sure they would have been at my dissertation defense, if only over Skype, and they would have cheered. Pete Myers is my hero. Over nearly a decade of early mornings working with the crew of Environmental Health Sciences, creating Above the Fold and The Daily Climate, I learned more than I had in all my years of institutional education put together. It was Pete who showed me how to explain endocrine disruption to diverse audiences and it is Pete's tireless engagement with the realm of policy and law where I dare not venture that gives me hope for our collective future. I can not thank you enough for bringing me into the Fold. My deep gratitude also to Pauli, Wendy, Laura, Douglas, Marla, Peter, Kara, and the rest of the team for their friendship. Thank you to Susan Nagle, who let me tag along at my first scientific conference when I was feeling quite lost, and to Fred vomSaal. who laughed at my limerick about iii bisphenol-A1. Thank you to Jane Burns and Robin Dodson, who taught me something new each semester. I would to express my gratitude to GreenFaith, where the Rev. Fletcher Harper and Rabbi Lawrence Troster and my colleagues in the inaugural fellowship class encouraged and inspired me and nurtured the seeds of these ideas. I met Janisse Ray at a locavore potluck in Vermont. She invited me to collaborate with her on a chapter she was working on, and no matter how clumsy my first attempts at expressing myself were, Janisse always responded, "Keep writing!" Thank you, Janisse. I will! At Algalita Marine Research Foundation, I owe thanks to Captain Charles Moore, who took me to sea, to Nikhil Davé, Patty Warhol, Jeff, Marieta Francis, Gwen Lattin, and others who showed me the ropes. Thank you for an unforgettable summer. Anna Cummins and Marcus Eriksen once lent me Marcus' boat as lodging while he was at sea on the Junk raft. Thank you for our delightful conversations years later in New Orleans and New York. I am in awe of your work in the world. Thank you to Chelsea Rochman, who as a graduate student, collected depth samples for me from the North Pacific gyre. I will never forgive myself for not being able to fund their analysis. I am forever indebted to the late Gordon Cosby, and our spiritual support group at the Festival Center. Dawn Longenecker, my Discipleship Year leader, who believed in me when I was ready to give up on myself, thank you. For my spiritual director, David 1 Paper, plastic, epoxy, and ink / Am I BPA's ultimate sink? / Is there bisphenol-A in my tuna fillet/ And in the water I drink? (Don't worry...I'll stick to prose.) iv Hilfiker, for our long walks together in Rock Creek Park, sometimes in silence and tears, I give thanks. For dinners with David and Marja that nourish and sustain me, I giveve thanks. For the high bar of perseverance and courage set by my students at the Academy of Hope, and for Elizabeth and Audrey and Jessie's unwavering support and sense of humor, I give thanks. I am grateful for morning prayer in Petworth with Franciscan friends and with friends from the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house. I will never forget confession there. When I had finished unburdening my soul of what I thought were unspeakable crimes, the priest just patted my head and said, "Is that all?" Would that we all experience such grace. Thank you to all my Discipleship Year housemates, especially Barbara. If she and I were still in touch, I would ask her to illustrate this manuscript with her photographs. I met Stephanie Kaza at an Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences conference in the summer of 2013. After our panel, Stephanie asked me casually, "So, what are you doing this fall?" I did not anticipate how profoundly this encounter would change the shape of my career. She brought me back with her to the University of Vermont, where I learned so much from both Stephanie and Adrian Ivakhiv, who took me on as a teaching assistant. They never scolded, even when I lost the notebook that contained our only copy of the students' grades. In the spring, Stephanie arranged for me to solo teach my first college course: a senior capstone entitled "Plastics, Human Health, and the Environment." My students' patience, enthusiasm, willingness to play, and gentle guidance as I grappled with how to present the material was invaluable. A special shout out to Charlotte Frank, who went on to graduate work in plastic marine debris, and whose experiments on mealworms and polystyrene appear later in these v pages. I cannot resist including an anecdote about one of my earliest mentors, Sandra Steingraber, who graciously invited me to assist her with research for The Falling Age of Puberty. She gave the keynote address at a conference in Burlington on women's health. I paused at the door to speak to those who were protesting the conference sponsor, Planned Parenthood. I tried to explain that they belonged inside, collaborating with us, to help create a world where toxic chemicals would no longer pose a threat to healthy conception, pregnancy, and birth. I did not succeed in that endeavor, and when I turned to enter, I was curtly told that my name did not appear on the list. My registration must have been "lost." After much negotiating, I was grudgingly allowed in. After her speech, Sandra came to greet me with tremendous enthusiasm, in front of the woman who had questioned my credentials: "Oh! If they had only told me you were here, I would have introduced you from the podium. I'm so glad to see you. I do hope we can collaborate again?" Thank you, Sandra, for your great kindness, and for your continuing example of scholarly activism and integrity. Thank you to Samantha Macbride who work in discard studies is a source of inspiration and endless fascination for me.