作者 ｜
林宜平(台灣大學公共衛生學院健康風險及政策評估中心)
摘要 ｜
台灣的RCA公司於1994年遭人舉發，工廠不當傾倒有機廢液，鄰近地區的地下水受三氯乙烯與四氯乙烯等有多種有機溶劑污染。一群罹癌的前RCA員工組成自救會，關切環境污染及職業暴露與健康的相關。從1998年起，政府委託學者專家，開始一系列的健康相關研究，目前有包括動物實驗、環境健康風險評估、環境流行病學，以及職業流行病學等六篇研究報告發表。然而這幾篇研究報告並未完全證實工業污染與健康的相關，並且引發許多爭議。
本文由女性主義的觀點，回顧六篇RCA健康相關研究中的性別變項及其資料分析方式，嘗試回答在目前的公共衛生研究典範下，為什麼女性的環境及職業健康危害難以證實。
本研究發現，公共衛生研究者以研究男性環境與職業醫學的典範研究女性健康，他們或是忽視女性的社會特性，或是未考量女性的生物特性。在環境健康風險評估中，研究者低估女性居民家務工作中可能的污染暴露；在環境流行病學研究中，女性居民因為隨夫居的習俗，樣本流失的比例較高；至於在一系列的職業流行病學研究中，研究者則未考量關鍵的女性青春期化學暴露。
本研究藉由分析流行病學知識生產的過程強調，具有女性主義觀點的科學研究，「從女性的生活思考」，並考量女性的社會與生物特性，才是更好的科學。為保障台灣的婦女健康，我們需要支持更多的婦女健康研究，也需要建立女性主義流行病學的新典範。
Title ｜
Women and Water: An Analysis of RCA Health Effect Studies from a Feminist Perspective
Author ｜
Yi-Ping Lin( Center of Health Risk Assessment and Policy College of Public Health National Taiwan University)
Abstract ｜
In 1994, the RCA (Radio Company of America) factory in Taiwan was impeached for polluting groundwater with trichloroethane (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), and other industrial solvents. Subsequently, former RCA workers, who had been diagnosed with cancer, began to
organize themselves in order to voice their concerns with the origins of their health troubles: potential exposure to environmental and occupational hazards. In 1998, the government responded by initiating research in public health, which has since generated six published studies: an animal study, environmental health risk assessment study, environmental epidemiological study and occupational epidemiological research. However, these health studies did not sufficiently verify correlation between industrial pollution and health. They have also sparked some controversies. Employing a gender analysis method, this paper examines gender variables presented in the released RCA research and aims to ascertain why, under the existing public health research paradigm, it has proven so problematical to establish a relationship between occupational and
environmental pollution, and women’s health.
This paper concludes that the RCA studies neglected in their data analyses to take into account women’s social or biological features with a male environment and occupational medicine paradigm. For instance, the environmental health risk assessments underestimated female residents’ exposure to pollutants caused by their contact with certain chemicals during their house chores. In the environmental epidemiological study, the “lost for follow-up” group was much more predominant due to the custom of patrilocal residence. In a series of occupational epidemiological studies, the researchers further failed to acknowledge any critical exposure during girls’ puberty.
By analyzing the research of the epidemiology , this paper further emphasizes that the researches will be more valid while employing a feminist viewpoint, “thinking from women’s lives” and taking female social and biological features into account. To protect the health of women in Taiwan the academia needs to support more women’s health studies and strive to establish a new feminist epidemiology paradigm.
Keywords ｜
industrial pollution, epidemiology, women’s health,Feminism