ABSTRACT
All major environmental issues involve dilemmas. They reflect problems for which no panacea exists; there are costs to any possible choices. Landfills or other technological systems can be designed to securely contain hazards; pollution is merely a technological problem waiting to be solved. In the absence of an alternative paradigm, toxic victims are left to deal with toxic exposure in ways that continue their participation in the system that caused the pollution. Toxic activists seek "cleanup" and other engineering solutions. They press for health testing as a way of gaining some control over the problem. Local environmental resistance, therefore, shares many of the same characteristics of realized toxic exposure—fears, stigma, stress, disablement, and community mobilization. People fear the kinds of lifestyle and lifescape impacts that might accompany future toxic exposure. Finally, the subjects of toxic exposure believe they have been unfairly victimized; contamination is unjust, and if justice were to prevail, they would not have deserved their unfortunate fate.
