This dissertation examines how changing conceptions of risk responsibility relate to changing ideas of citizenship and the public sphere. Using the empirical case study of chemical body burdens, and drawing on focus groups and in-depth interviews, in addition to a twenty-year framing analysis of Canadian news media coverage of environmental contamination, this dissertation examines how risks are individualized through an ideology of “precautionary consumption.” Precautionary consumption encourages self-protection through consumer-based vigilance (e.g., by buying organic produce or “natural” cleaning products) and shifts the focus away from the state’s responsibility to regulate human and environmental exposure to contaminants. Three key findings emerge from this research. First, over twenty years of Canadian media coverage, precautionary consumption is increasingly prominent in shaping the problem frame around chemical contamination. As a media frame, the ideology of precautionary consumption reconceptualises chemical body burdens as an environmental problem affecting everyone equally to an individual problem that afflicts unaware consumers. Second, interview data suggests that the practice of mediating individual exposure to chemicals is overwhelmingly characterized as a caregiving responsibility requiring a mother’s vigilance. Interview respondents interpreted this responsibility through a dual ideological lens comprised of intensive mothering and precautionary consumption. Interviews with mothers from low-income households furthermore suggest that practices of chemical mediation vary by social class, and that access to protective commodities is highly uneven. Third, interview data also suggest that respondents viewed vigilant shopping practices as part of accepting greater personal responsibility for chemical pollution as a health threat and larger environmental problem. Respondents dismissed the transformative potential of the state in addressing body burdens; in contrast, they expressed confidence in their power as consumers and in the responsiveness of the market to protect them from chemical threats. The concluding chapter of the dissertation discusses how precautionary consumption draws our attention away from the universality of risk, and the responsibilities of the state for managing body burdens as a collective risk.

This dissertation examines how changing conceptions of risk responsibility relate to changing ideas of citizenship and the public sphere. Using the empirical case study of chemical body burdens, and drawing on focus groups and in-depth interviews, in addition to a twenty-year framing analysis of Canadian news media coverage of environmental contamination, this dissertation examines how risks are individualized through an ideology of “precautionary consumption.” Precautionary consumption encourages self-protection through consumer-based vigilance (e.g., by buying organic produce or “natural” cleaning products) and shifts the focus away from the state’s responsibility to regulate human and environmental exposure to contaminants. Three key findings emerge from this research. First, over twenty years of Canadian media coverage, precautionary consumption is increasingly prominent in shaping the problem frame around chemical contamination. As a media frame, the ideology of precautionary consumption reconceptualises chemical body burdens as an environmental problem affecting everyone equally to an individual problem that afflicts unaware consumers. Second, interview data suggests that the practice of mediating individual exposure to chemicals is overwhelmingly characterized as a caregiving responsibility requiring a mother’s vigilance. Interview respondents interpreted this responsibility through a dual ideological lens comprised of intensive mothering and precautionary consumption. Interviews with mothers from low-income households furthermore suggest that practices of chemical mediation vary by social class, and that access to protective commodities is highly uneven. Third, interview data also suggest that respondents viewed vigilant shopping practices as part of accepting greater personal responsibility for chemical pollution as a health threat and larger environmental problem. Respondents dismissed the transformative potential of the state in addressing body burdens; in contrast, they expressed confidence in their power as consumers and in the responsiveness of the market to protect them from chemical threats. The concluding chapter of the dissertation discusses how precautionary consumption draws our attention away from the universality of risk, and the responsibilities of the state for managing body burdens as a collective risk.