Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Anthropology
First Advisor
Valeggia, Claudia
Abstract
Exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals and other environmental contaminants is globally ubiquitous and can have adverse consequences on health throughout the lifespan. In this project, I investigated the experiences and consequences of environmental contaminant exposure for maternal and infant health in two places that differ environmentally, politically, and socioeconomically –Namqom in Formosa, Argentina, and New Haven, Connecticut. Specifically, I hypothesized that environmental contaminant exposure influences human well-being and physiology, as assessed from the human milk and urine metabolome, through changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis in both infancy and adulthood.I first investigated the local context, both historical and present, that influences environmental exposures in Namqom, an peri-urban Indigenous Qom community in Formosa, Argentina. I applied the framework of infrastructural violence to interrogate how governing bodies disconnect the Qom from resources that affect their health, wealth, and sovereignty, leaving them spatially and socially isolated from the urban, Criollo majority. Despite this ostracization, the Qom engage in the politics of refusal to assert their sovereignty and maintain cultural continuity. In a different sociocultural context, I examined how New Haven, Connecticut mothers think about their environment. Using thematic analysis, I found that mothers experienced tension as they balance feelings of worry and personal responsibility, viewed environmental exposures and sustainability as overlapping issues with similar solutions, and actively engaged in mitigation actions to reduce their and their families’ exposure. They also called for changes to reduce environmental contaminant exposure that mirrored the levels of the socioecological model for health. I also investigated environmental exposures in drinking water, human milk, and urine in both Namqom and New Haven, using an untargeted metabolomics approach to characterize exposures and investigated alterations in endogenous metabolic pathways. I found that environmental contaminants in the water supply, human milk, and urine were associated with similar metabolic pathway outcomes, namely amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, and energy metabolism, despite variation in the individual contaminants present across the analyses for both infants and mothers in Argentina and the United States. These results suggest that environmental contaminant mixtures may often have similar physiological effects when assessed globally; if this finding is replicable, it may suggest that targeting individual contaminants will be less productive in improving human health than more comprehensive approaches to reducing contaminant exposure. Research on environmental exposures is predominantly conducted in European or North American contexts with middle-class white communities. This research expands our understanding of variation in environmental exposures and human biological responses beyond this context. Through a mixed-methods approach, this project also holistically investigates how structural factors influence human exposure to EDCs, with consequences for individuals’ lived experience and human physiology and development.
Recommended Citation
Chaney, Carlye, "Environmental exposures from the local to the global: A comparison of the experiences and consequences of exposure among the Qom of Formosa, Argentina, and residents of New Haven, Connecticut" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1082.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1082
