A quotidian anthropocene of chemical toxicants floats in Toronto, Ontario’s indoor atmospheres. Total volatile organic compounds (TVOC) are a measure of indoor air quality that accounts for an entire chemical class—the cumulative level of molecules which volatize, or turn into gas, at room temperature. Highly reactive, they constantly attach to particulate matter, combining to create secondary reactions and heretofore unknown clouds of substances. While fungi such as mould, bacteria, and plants release VOCs, a significant portion of indoor atmospheres are composed of everyday VOCs relating to products which release petrochemical vapours, such as cigarette smoke, air fresheners, gas heating, cleaning products, personal care products, and furnishings and building materials. New configurations of technoscientific markets have recently made the tracking of variations in TVOC accessible via personal air monitoring devices. This series of photos will juxtapose the visualization of data offered in the TVOC level measured by an “Atmotube” device with the visualization of petrochemical toxicants in indoor atmospheres. It hopes to catalyze reflection on the late industrial materialization of these exposures, as well as the politics of their regulation. Images will reconceptualize the toxicological knowledge and expertise underlying their sources, and their raced, classed and gendered metabolizations and co-becomings. Considering how different metrics reify or reimagine long-term, low-level concepts of toxicity, images of mundane, seemingly benign spaces which have a high TVOC reading can document environments with the potential for long-term health effects including neurotoxicity, as well as other forms of complex respiratory, and endocrine illness. These visualizations of what Choy and Zee (2015) have called an atmospheric “condition of suspension” may offer another way of relating to these invisible toxic dynamics, and the ways that knowledge about them is produced.
A quotidian anthropocene of chemical toxicants floats in Toronto, Ontario’s indoor atmospheres. Total volatile organic compounds (TVOC) are a measure of indoor air quality that accounts for an entire chemical class—the cumulative level of molecules which volatize, or turn into gas, at room temperature. Highly reactive, they constantly attach to particulate matter, combining to create secondary reactions and heretofore unknown clouds of substances. While fungi such as mould, bacteria, and plants release VOCs, a significant portion of indoor atmospheres are composed of everyday VOCs relating to products which release petrochemical vapours, such as cigarette smoke, air fresheners, gas heating, cleaning products, personal care products, and furnishings and building materials. New configurations of technoscientific markets have recently made the tracking of variations in TVOC accessible via personal air monitoring devices. This series of photos will juxtapose the visualization of data offered in the TVOC level measured by an “Atmotube” device with the visualization of petrochemical toxicants in indoor atmospheres. It hopes to catalyze reflection on the late industrial materialization of these exposures, as well as the politics of their regulation. Images will reconceptualize the toxicological knowledge and expertise underlying their sources, and their raced, classed and gendered metabolizations and co-becomings. Considering how different metrics reify or reimagine long-term, low-level concepts of toxicity, images of mundane, seemingly benign spaces which have a high TVOC reading can document environments with the potential for long-term health effects including neurotoxicity, as well as other forms of complex respiratory, and endocrine illness. These visualizations of what Choy and Zee (2015) have called an atmospheric “condition of suspension” may offer another way of relating to these invisible toxic dynamics, and the ways that knowledge about them is produced.