“The Statistical View Is Not the Moral View”: Disposable Medical Plastics as Toxic Infrastructure

Abstract

Disposable plastics are ubiquitous in healthcare, where they are associated with hygiene and infection control. In this article, using the case of disposable medical plastics and drawing from autoethnographic and ethnographic fieldwork in South and Southeast Asia, I describe the negotiations and ethical quandaries involved when scales of care clash and dimensions of care are in conflict. Disposable medical plastics form both a materiality of care and a toxic infrastructure in medicine. As such, they are implicated in competing visions of health at different unit scales (the individual patient or the public/planet) and temporal orientations (the present or future body). Disposable medical plastics thus reveal the importance of attention to scale and nonscalability in matters of care, especially in a world permeated by chemical infrastructures that bring toxic considerations.