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Former STS DE student, Dr. Melina Packer’s first book, Toxic Sexual Politics (forthcoming spring 2025, from NYU Press) shows how the founding fathers of U.S. toxicology were ideologically aligned with the chemical industry, inventing a science that could “make chemicals safe,” as opposed to one that could adequately protect planetary health from toxicants’ hazards. While many toxicologists today are critical of the chemical industry, Melina Packer powerfully argues that this scientific discipline inadvertently reproduces the very same white supremacist and heterosexist logics that generated environmental injustices in the first place. The field of toxicology can explicitly confront chemical corporate power, and hence better protect planetary health, by building from queer, feminist, anti-ableist, and antiracist movements for environmental and reproductive justice. 

For more information, please watch or listen to Dr. Packer’s brief interview.