Hazardous Odors? The Discourse on Chemical Dangers Between Knowledge, Emotion, and Gender Attributions in the Case of the Merck Works in Darmstadt Around 1980

Smells issuing from chemical production gave a focal point to the abstract terms in which the public and the media discussed questions of emissions, contaminated sites, pesticides, and dioxin – all burning issues in Germany between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s. Residents of the city of Darmstadt who lived close to a chemical plant belonging to the local Merck corporation reacted emotionally to the odors it gave off, fearing health risks. These odors and the criticism they provoked gave the wider protest a local momentum and potency. The link between emotion and smell became, on the one hand, an argument of counter-knowledge, one that challenged established sovereignty over interpretation, (male) expert roles and social power distribution. On the other hand, experts questioned the rational character of critique with reference to emotions, faith, or femininity. Yet the protest was at least partly successful. It transformed a backroom discussion of experts into public, it challenged established systems of knowledge and control successfully, and it raised political pressure. A fundamental change in chemical production or the question of pesticides, however, did not occur. A contributing factor to this failure may have been that the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 diverted the focus of environmental movements elsewhere.