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This conference will be translated directly (in English and in French).

This conference endeavours to study chemical industries that use fossil fuel derivatives. It will focus on these industrial activities’ environmental and health effects on surrounding areas and local populations. In the 20^th century, petrochemical activities shaped their surrounding areas. Not just because such facilities required massive ancillary infrastructure networks to be built, but also because they enabled the production of new substances requiring coal and oil derivatives. As soon as petrochemical facilities were brought on stream, their harmful effects on local communities were perceptible. These industrial activities were rapidly accused of causing health problems for workers and neighbouring populations alike. Conflictuality was generally latent but sometimes broke out in overt violence, especially when highly visible “industrial spillovers” occurred, abruptly putting the spotlight on previously-unnoticed chronic pollution. Up to the present day, this conflictuality can also be vehemently expressed when deindustrialisation breaks the unspoken agreement that may have existed between workers and the companies that paid their wages. When an industrial activity ends, its ecological and health effects may become apparent, fuelling the resentment of the affected local populations and giving rise to activist movements that sometimes draw on revived memories of past disasters.

Therefore, surveys of the petrochemical industry’s health consequences help to reshape social ties in industrial areas. These health surveys respond to strong social demand from workers and neighbouring populations exposed to chronic pollution. Production of this knowledge can be aimed at filling the gaps of scientific knowledge that was not produced or sounding an alert about the potential pathogenic risk of a factory when neighbouring populations carry out a public epidemiological survey, or even instilling doubts about the effects of certain substances in order to prevent regulations from being adopted that would restrict companies’ operations. This process is part of a conflictual context: knowledge is debated, disputed and subject to controversy.

Public authorities play an ambiguous role, sometimes regulating industrial firms, sometimes supporting them. This role is determined by the level of involvement of various interest groups, along with the involvement of economic agents in these cases or the existence of political opportunities (when medical controversies gain sway in the public debate, when conflicts arise between municipal and national authorities, etc.). Thus, the government can facilitate knowledge production in order to make certain cases of pollution visible and to fight against them. The various scales of analysis by public authorities may concur or they may disagree. For example, national public health institutions may issue conclusions that contradict the findings of surveys commissioned by municipal authorities. Despite periods of heated controversy, the attention given to public health issues shows sharp discontinuities in these industrial areas: conclusions of surveys are sometimes forgotten for several decades, leading to identical surveys being repeated. These processes of “active forgetting” contribute to both ignorance about the industry’s health effects, and a furthering of local arrangements to ensure that industrial activity continues despite its harmful effects.

A growing number of monographs on “chemical corridors” are being published around the world, investigating what these areas are called locally. Examples include research on “Cancer Alley” or “Toxic Corridors” in the US, or on the “Triangolo della morte” on the Sicilian coast. These terms refer to districts whose industrial purpose began or was strengthened in the 20^th century during the massive wave of infrastructure investments that enabled the expansion of the chemicals industry based on fossil fuel-derived synthesis. Not only did these facilities have an environmental and health impact; they also created a phenomenon of dependence that these districts are struggling to break free from.

However, comparisons between chemical corridors in Europe, North America and others regions are few in number. By bringing together studies carried out on various industrial lands, this conference aims to lay the groundwork for a comparative history of such areas. By breaking with historical scholarship that considers increased fossil energy consumption and local prosperity to be a foregone conclusion, this conference calls for participants to focus their narratives of the petrochemicals industry on the health impact of its activities. As a result, this conference will give special emphasis to papers that take a fresh look at the history of health surveys in industrial areas, and to projects that foster in-depth discussions between researchers in the social sciences and public health