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Community resilience and response following PFAS contamination

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<p>Water is a critical resource for life, and communities are dependent upon reliable access to clean
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<p>water to maintain stable quality of life. Issues of water contamination threaten this stability,
creating uncertainty, threatening public health, and necessitating community response. One
emerging water contamination issue involves a family of industrial chemicals called Per- and
Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). This study uses an integrated multi-theory approach to
examine the processes of Resilience and Collective Action within a community experiencing
issues of PFAS contamination. Results indicate that the community was generally successful in
enacting resilience, however some challenges were encountered in the form of high levels of
uncertainty, inaccessibility of technical information, challenges foregrounding productive action,
and challenges maximizing transformative potential. Results also indicated the community was
general successful with collective action in the immediate aftermath of the issue. The community
struggled to maintain collective action over a long period and to transition to high level
advocacy. Results demonstrated that existing theoretical frames are limited in their ability to
predict effective resilience and collective action in events of long-term water contamination.
These limitations are described in detail and the potential for expansion of these theories is
discussed. Suggestions to improve future responses to issues of PFAS contamination, as well as
suggestions for intervention into the community of focus are offered.
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  1. 10.25394/pgs.14916399.v1
Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/14916399
Date22 July 2021
CreatorsHenry Skoving Seeger (11083557)
Source SetsPurdue University
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, Thesis
RightsCC BY 4.0
Relationhttps://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Community_resilience_and_response_following_PFAS_contamination/14916399

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