Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers

by Michelle Murphy

Before 1980, sick building syndrome did not exist. By the 1990s, it was among the most commonly investigated occupational health problems in the United States. Afflicted by headaches, rashes, and immune system disorders, office workers—mostly women—protested that their workplaces were filled with toxic hazards; yet federal investigators could detect no chemical cause. This richly detailed history tells the story of how sick building syndrome came into how indoor exposures to chemicals wafting from synthetic carpet, ink, adhesive, solvents, and so on became something that relatively privileged Americans worried over, felt, and ultimately sought to do something about. As Michelle Murphy shows, sick building syndrome provides a window into how environmental politics moved indoors. Sick building syndrome embodied a politics of uncertainty that continues to characterize contemporary American environmental debates. Michelle Murphy explores the production of uncertainty by juxtaposing multiple histories, each of which explains how an expert or lay tradition made chemical exposures perceptible or imperceptible, existent or nonexistent. She shows how uncertainty emerged from a complex confluence of feminist activism, office worker protests, ventilation engineering, toxicology, popular epidemiology, corporate science, and ecology. In an illuminating case study, she reflects on EPA scientists’ efforts to have their headquarters recognized as a sick building. Murphy brings all of these histories together in what is not only a thorough account of an environmental health problem but also a much deeper exploration of the relationship between history, materiality, and uncertainty.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Academic, Science, Sociology, Environment, Social Science

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Chris Beiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading this. It’s a good exploration of a number of interlocking histories—HVAC, 20th century feminisms, the chemical industry, the EPA, etc. I don’t think I really understood “Ghostbusters” at all until I read the section on sick building investigators and cybernetics. The Stay Puffed Marshmallow man, after all, is a type of chemical spill, no?

It’s also conceptually rich—the idea of a “regime of imperceptibility,” and the act of the non-creation of knowledge, are tools that I find myself coming back to repeatedly.

It’s not perfect—the introduction drags when it decides to explicate a bespoke version of an “assemblage” that’s mostly appears only in the first chapter. The chapter on MCS is probably the biggest disappointment—with so much potential for detail, it doesn’t seem to delve quite deep enough. I do think it does a disservice in giving somewhat too much credence to the monolithic narratives of MCSers, and too little to the idea that obsessive avoidance of chemicals might in some cases—though not all—be as a symptom of OCD or an externalization of anxiety into a need for control in one’s environment rather than a bona-fide reaction to chemicals. That such a movement invites a heterogenous batch of realities is what makes it such a rich subject.

[Anusha Datar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of and provides critical analysis around the development of and human consequences of indoor office environments, especially in the context of sick building syndrome and its impacts on women in the workplace. Murphy expertly weaves together the histories of our built environments, our environment itself, the development of medicine, labor movements, and social movements to provide evidence around her notion of the building as a Deleuzian assemblage, where humans and the work they do in buildings constitute the building itself and the building's form and function dictate the lives and work of the humans in the buildings in the first place. I enjoyed this concept and a few of Murphy's explorations, especially the discussions around "imperceptibility."

This book was a compelling survey of a variety of topics about human ecology, and I enjoyed the writing style and relatively clear and straightforward language. However, ultimately each chapter felt a bit separate and there is not much of a conclusion tying all of the concepts introduced to each other. I also found some of the chapters (like the MCS) one a bit incomplete and disappointing, so I'd probably caveat any recommendation I'd make of this book.

[JC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read a portion of this book for a course, and just returned to it a few weeks ago to finish it. Absolutely beautifully written book. I am such a fan of Murphy. They bring together environmental history, history of medicine, and social and labour history in such brilliant ways, and their work is just such a pleasure to read. Particularly the first half of this book. Most of the stuff below are cobbled together from notes and different things I wrote over the past few months, but I thought I’d start with this excerpt, which I found clarifying for Latour’s writing on ‘scientific reality’ and ‘enclosure’:

“when humans found ways to detect and manipulate entities called molecules, that we could assert that molecules had always existed even before we knew about them. Now that we have molecules we need them and do things with them… At the same, attending to historical ontology… other objects and properties that do not exist for us now may come into being for us, and… make the object “molecule” a less useful description for truth-telling.”
 
Here, ontology is a process of naming, of drawing a line around some phenomenon unfolding in reality over time, to better understand what ‘exists’, and also to be able to do things in the world in relation to that which exists.

Similar to Foucault’s notion that discursive practices produce ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ rather than simply describing them, Murphy’s text describe how various objects articulate each other, and elaborates in a footnote that their use of the word articulate referred not only to speech, but also physicality – like how a joint articulates (connects/joins) parts of an arm. Meaning is generated at the interface of phenomena that come into relation with each other in complex ways.

Murphy draws on Deleuze’s notion of assemblage, which can be defined as a constellation of “discourses, objects, practices, and subject positions” (p. 12) that function collectively within a system of knowledge.

Murphy frames the building as a sort of “prosthesis of the body.” For Murphy buildings and bodies mutually constitute each other such that it is difficult to imagine one without the other. Humans usually require some form of shelter to survive, rendering buildings a necessary “prosthesis of the body”, and conversely a building absent of bodies is considered ‘derelict’.

One sees that the relations between these two objects are ontologically generative. They mutually constitute each other. While isolating objects from the complex constellation of the assemblage to which they belong can be useful for scientists who want to draw clear linear lines of causality (no doubt useful), analytical isolation and sanitization comes at a cost.

Similarly, for my own research watermills and rivers acquire meaning from the assemblages they belong to. Watermills were necessary components within larger assemblages that spanned from clearcutting projects to the Royal Navy fleets of British empire.

Murphy is principally focused on the citizen science efforts of feminist organizers concerned about workplace injuries within modern offices. Murphy cites an interesting passage from the Trotskyist historian, Harry Braverman, to better frame how to think about the class relations of these women office workers:

“Harry Braverman, the well-known American socialist theorist, argued in his 1974 Labor and Monopoly Capital that ‘‘it is more accurate to see the clerical workers of the present monopoly capitalist era as virtually a new stratum. . . . Because if it is not, and if one ascribes to the millions of present-day clerical workers the ‘middle class’ or semi-managerial functions of that tiny and long-vanished clerical stratum of early capitalism, the result can only be a drastic misconception of modern society.’’”

While the causality of injuries of the proletariat occurring under industrial factory work was much clearer to trace, those that occurred within modernist office spaces, specifically to women clerical workers, were less clearly delineable. The diffuse and complex relationships within the assemblage of modernist workspaces complicated lines of causality for conditions like sick building syndrome generating uncertainty.

Murphy relies on this concept of assemblage to describe both the material and relational way things come to matter. Assemblages can both materialize and dematerialize objects—rendering certain phenomena perceptible or legible, and others invisible or unintelligible (p. 13). Murphy shows how the labouring body in its multiplicity might belong to both an assemblage of medical professionals and diseases and another assemblage of feminist political organization and personal subjectivity (p. 14). In similar ways, bodies of water like rivers can exist within an assemblage of a watermill supplying lumber to the Royal Navy, while simultaneously being situated within a radically different assemblage of Indigenous kin relations. One assemblage can make legible an object, like pollution or dispossession, which is rendered invisible in another assemblage.

I’ve also been recently reading about the extent to which past observers of Ontario sawmills attributed the extinction of local salmon to sawdust, and thinking how that relates to something I encountered in Erik Loomis’s book “Empire of Timber” which mentions how sawdust exposure became linked with numerous types of cancer in forestry workers. I’ll finish with this excerpt by Murphy:

“The politics of chemical exposure, whether in streams, offices, or neighborhoods is caught in a tangle of multiple histories. Each of these histories populates the world with different kinds of relationships and imbues exposures with divergent qualities, while at the same time producing domains of imperceptibility.”

[Judd Street · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michelle Murphy's "Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty" is the book of a gifted writer and theoretician, exploring the phenomenon of SBS and its social construction. While the book left me questioning the hyper-agnostic treatment of the politics, as well as the lack of much analysis of the titular 'uncertainty' within the text, it represents a useful contribution through its idea of "regimes of perceptibility," which form the basis of the first several chapters.

There's always a risk of reading books with a fundamental bias towards one's own theoretical interests, but to me, Murphy's core contribution is to develop this idea of "regimes of perceptibility" (p. 24). Other STS scholars have looked at the way institutions shape the world to be easily measured and quantified in order to render it simpler to govern (e.g., Scott's Seeing Like A State), while others pay attention to the ways that knowledge practices shape institutional epistemologies (e.g., Miller's Knowledge Systems). But, Murphy takes a slightly different tack on this, exploring the ways that the perceptibility of a phenomenon - and the ways our technologies of perception - shape the very constitution of the experience, its legitimacy, and our collective response as a society.

As one example of this fascinating story, Murphy's first few chapters explore the contrasting modes of knowledge production used by engineers and those suffering from SBS. For engineers, building occupants were thought of in a highly mechanistic way, easily tested in laboratory setups that neatly quantified impacts of exposures. By contrast, Murphy explores how the use of survey methodologies could be both emancipatory (p. 71) and constraining for those suffering from SBS, creating opportunities to make perceptible their experiences (or rendering them imperceptible via instrument design, p. 144, 149).

There's also an interesting undercurrent of the ways that regimes of perceptibility affect the legitimation of those suffering from SBS or other conditions. This arises from the way that "the success of the comfortable office, its seemingly naturalness, and the security is symbolized made it difficult for ventilation engineers, managers, occupational health experts, or even workers to imagine, let alone articulate, how such a space might inflict harm" (p. 34). We also see this in later discussion of those suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, where "if the chemically reactive person was to live with others, she or he must get them to modify spaces and change behaviours that were coded as benign by everyone else" (p. 163). These perspectives are all the renewed in the context of those who try to avoid COVID in our now ostensibly "post covid world."

I was, though, left a little flummoxed by two points. First, despite its presence in the title, we never really get much in the way of interrogation of uncertainty in the book. By design, the lens of 'regimes of perceptibility' tends to focus on the construction of differing knowledge claims, rather than the underdetermination within or contestation between them. I wish Murphy developed the analysis of uncertainty more richly to show how it interacted with the core theories.

Perhaps more confusing, though, was Murphy's exaggerated commitment to neutrality. Throughout the book, Murphy adamantly insists on the importance of not serving as arbiter of whether or not SBS is a real condition or not. This harkens to the all-important concept of analytical symmetry in STS, which I certainly understand. It's a richer story for not telling it as "why one side was right and the other was wrong in their understanding."

But, the deployment of this neutrality is dangerous in a political landscape. Murphy acknowledges this directly on p. 7, describing how "Writing about the historicity of chemical exposures in the recent past is treacherous when one's arguments are always in danger of being reframed as affirming the unreality of the exposures." I'm persuaded by this, of course... but deeply confused as to why Murphy is so adamant about never granting any credence to the experiences of those who suffer from the SBS or MCS. The reason Murphy's example is so dangerous is because of the raw power of the societies and structures: an academic giving cover to employers, industry, engineers, and policy makers wishing to minimize the health experiences of those suffering is indeed wrong. But refusing to ascribe any validity to those suffering isn't an ethically equal move; it's one that ossifies the power structures in a much more subtle way. At some point, telling a story of oppressors and oppressed without value judgements is, in and of itself, a value judgement.

This confuses me, because I think the analysis would have been even more incisive if not for this reticence to ever affirm the sufferers. It would fill a desperately needed void in the literature; a space between Oreskes-style manufactured uncertainty and this much more nuanced case of uncertainty in an unknown, emerging condition; uncertainty that was embraced and reinforced through regimes of perceptibility in much less intentional or malicious ways.

Still the core theory is exceptionally useful and well worth exploring. There's a lot more milage to be had in these ideas, and Murphy has made a very valuable contribution to the field.

[Sarah Inman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In an effort to understand the built environment, Michelle Murphy grapples with a myriad of problems relying on a historical study of medicine, women’s movements, toxicology, environmental policy, corporate science, racial segregation, industrial hygiene, EPA science and ventilation engineering. She argues that sickness arose out of the way in which buildings were arranged. She also shows how disease, and the Sick Building Syndrome in particular, broke down barriers of class privilege. Her findings show that rogue cells do not discriminate when it comes to social status, which is one of the reasons the symptoms of complainants began to be acknowledged in the first place.

Over the course of seven chapters she illuminates her theories by further investigating the controversies surrounding SBS. She shows how the body became subjected to its environment—becoming “standardized” just as the temperature, humidity and air flow (once in the domain of nature) in the room had now become standardized through ventilation engineering. She sets up her display of the strange relationship of building with body in chapter 1 by showing how the emergence of the “indoor climate” in the office building—something that could be manipulated and controlled by humans—made it so that we became estranged from our humanness.

In chapter 2 she moves to focus on how humans became objects when seen as merely pieces of the larger success of the industry; in this way, the workers were owned by their managers. The offices were designed to guide people toward efficiency similar in how the constitution or other laws are designed to direct individual actions. Murphy returns to her roots in Gender and Women Studies to show how women were marginalized in the work force being likened to the man’s “second wife.” She points out that office oppression from the treatment of managers in addition to toxicity was in minute, seemingly innocuous actions.

Chapter 3 focuses on women as the majority of complainants and often overlooked with a diagnosis of hysteria. It was the work of those from the bottom—the unseen, feminists and labor activists, who organized through grassroots movements—that the sickness as a policy issue was pushed to the surface. Just as health is unseen and pervasive, so are ideas and ideologies. She shows this by highlighting the dialogues—a way of bringing the unsaid to the surface, just as the unseen is brought to the surface through the body—that were held in those meetings with labor activists. A point she makes is that race (and gender) are not all together found only within the individual but are products of society—why are some marginalized and some aggrandized?

She also parses out what is perceptible to others, and shows how what is deemed unreal and imperceptible is relational to these views. One example of how these imperceptions become politicized is in the way health insurance companies will only cover health problems that are seen. She uses an overarching historical understanding of her topic to show that this blindness was sometimes accidentally created but was also an industry-sponsored science, in the case of the Tobacco Institute’s lobby to get regulation of secondhand smoke off the table. She shows how government scientists circumvented the truth to make chemical exposures seem innocuous; one way in which this was possible was by staffing regulatory agencies with people with vested interests in deregulation. This imperceptibility, paired with the specialized, coded, and often alienating language of corporate scientists, made it so that few could rebut it.

And finally, she shows the clash between experts and people emotionally and physically involved. The popular epidemiologists, supported by the workers and unions, knew indoor pollution was legitimate and manifested in nonspecific forms because it was happening in their own bodies. However, despite the tension between the “experts” and the activist, they each played a role in materializing the effect of chemicals on the body.
I think Murphy delivers a potentially dry topic in a rich way. My main critique is that she does not get into any more of the specifics of exposure and contamination. We really only hear about the bacteria, contamination, and disease in theory. It is almost as if she got lost in the social construction of inequality and discrimination that she forgot about the reality lurking beneath the surface. But perhaps this is part of the uncertainty that we see when so many different interests come together as in environmental policy; this is also the case with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and its varied potential causes and symptoms.

With that said, it is more enjoyable for me to read as it unravels much like an exciting piece of fiction, because it is so absurd and eerie at times. But this uncertainty—the not knowing whether or not it’s all a figment of your imagination—is often one of the most infuriating things when it comes to sickness. I think a little bit more detailed account of the chemical agents involved in the sicknesses could have done better at validating all the hard work of those ‘building ladies’. I know she urges us to “climb out of the cell” (163), but oh that we could, Dr. Murphy. Because the cell is unseen outside of its manifestations through the body, it is sometimes hard to believe it was really there.

The book has very little by way of conclusion. It is clear by the previous six chapters that she is mostly focused on the political—on how decisions about how to build, who to build around, and what to build have deep relationships with society. There are moments of outrage when you realize that the quest for affluence tied to capitalist motivations brought on the contamination and marginalization; but that once MCS and SBS were labeled, “affluence was made manifest by the level of security one could achieve, often through isolating middle-class life from that of ‘the street’” (166). But those who contaminated ‘the street’ should be held accountable. However, her last chapter could almost be read as a strange summation—one where she introduces somewhat random, loosely connected issues. It is here that she praises the use of the Internet for organizing people, and then gives advice about how to listen to your body. Also, don’t expect to find out why women were the only ones with the symptoms; she holds you in suspense until the final chapter.

I guess my major critique and praise is that each chapter unfolds as a book unto itself. Mostly, I found her work incredibly exciting, and I think it opens doors to many research questions such as what will our ecosystems look like now that we are manufacturing synthetic food in lab? Or what environments are particularly prone to cancer occurrences? One of her greatest contributions is showing how entangled our bodies are with physical space, political decisions and psychological dispositions.

[becca barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a fan of Murphy’s work, although sometimes admittedly, I find her concepts hard to grasp. This, however, was very interesting and a much easier read. She documents the ‘sick building syndrome’, and raises questions about the toxicity of our ‘safe’ indoor engineered environments. The recount of ‘pink collar’ office women’s sickness being dismissed as ‘female hysteria’ somehow didn’t surprise me. I think some of the later chapters made me reflect on the sanctity and safety of indoor spaces in relation to the COVID pandemic and our relationship with chemicals and microbes. Overall I enjoyed it but I think it was potentially a little too long for me personally!

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected this book to offer a relatively dense, concentrated view on Sick Building Syndrome, but there are so many compelling analyses, connections, frameworks, and alternate histories here! In particular, questions of racial and class privilege, the strict boundaries of biomedicine vs. strategies of resistance to that strictness, the feminization of nonspecific illness, and the consequences of capitalism in defining, creating, maintaining, and structuring illness experiences recur in adapted ways throughout the book. Surprisingly enjoyable to read while staying deeply insightful.

[YL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkably clear-headed book. A careful, thoughtful history of 'sick-building syndrome', a melange of health complaints that plagued office workers in the late-80s & early 90s. Murphy approaches the diagnosis from the perspective of the various interest groups at play in defining the disorder -- from workers at the EPA, to environment planners, to the architects & scientists who engineered the modern office space. What comes undone at the end of Murphy's discussion is the complexity of the social forces which make a disease, and what creates a 'social space'.

[Ember McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful read on the politics of expertise and 'objectivity' in science -- particularly appreciated how it's a narrative different than many of these cases -- white, office workers leveraging unions as opposed to racial and income minorities. Really useful for STS scholarship! Will definitely assign portions to my courses.

[Edward Fenner · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read.