ABSTRACT
With the discovery and announcement of contamination, toxic victims suddenly find themselves in a complex institutional context made up of the various local, state, and federal agencies having jurisdiction over their contamination incident. Effectively, toxic victims become "disabled," to use Ivan Illich's term, as suddenly they are dependent on professionals to expertly handle various areas of life formerly governed by their own naive wisdom. The key institutional contexts associated with disabling dynamics vary for individual toxic incidents, but the dynamics are inherently similar from incident to incident. To address community risk of illness related to Superfund sites, the US Congress established the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the Centers for Disease Control. The average citizen lacks the technical expertise to participate in many of the specialized decisions that follow from toxic exposure. Citizens' and regulators' binds interact synergistically, making it highly unlikely that alarmed citizens will understand and accept regulators' decisions as rational.
