ABSTRACT
The advent of global warming and climate change has heightened awareness that our world is simultaneously borderless yet interconnected. Harm in one region of the world transfers to communities in other parts of the world, often taking on distinct forms in different locations (e.g. rising water in the deltas of Bangladesh, sinking atolls of the Pacific), but ultimately the repercussions are negative for human, non-human and environmental health. Similarly, the globalisation of trade has reshaped the world, by removing barriers and opening up borders to facilitate the global transference of goods, services and technologies. In some instances this involves the transference of harm from the environment in which we live to the environment of ‘the body’ (increased incidence of environmental toxins in breast milk; uptake of environmental toxins by animals), or from industrial activities to the environment of nature (CO2 emissions, heavy metal pollution of water and soil), or it involves the transformation of something from one form to another (e.g. the recovery of lead from electronic waste to reprocess into jewellery). This chapter examines the movement of toxic harms across increasingly porous borders.
