A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed the West’s Relationship With Food

Garraf landfill, where Barcelona’s refuse had accumulated for more than thirty years. Similar cultural actions were used to soften the impact of complex projects such as the Corta Atalaya copper mine in Spain, where certain industries fostered mechanisms of ignorance through the sponsorship of artistic work, as Galech Amillano shows. New opportunities for labour in developing factories were another part of this continued silencing of the environmental and health effects of industrial projects, as exemplified by Pujada in his chapter on the Flix factory in Spain, and also by Rodríguez-Giralt and Tironi in their study on the installation of a copper smelting plant in the Puchuncaví area on the central coast of Chile. The latter also addresses the emergence of local opposition to toxic hazards and demands for policies that acknowledged them. Hamilton’s case study of the Parque de la Albufera in Valencia and the development of the rice industry documents a lack of knowledge of hydrological systems and their implications for contamination. Finally, Barca addresses the new forms of ignorance associated with narratives of the Anthropocene that leave out the toxicity, inequality, and environmental injustice of modern industry. In summary, Tóxicos invisibles investigates the methods by which the processes of scientific and technological change were constructed as well as regulated. It highlights specific participants – scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, and businessmen. It problematises not only their participation in the development of environmental ignorance, but also their limited capacity to modify the processes of this “invisibility of toxicity,” or to promote a more fruitful dialogue with stakeholders. In addition, the book promotes critical analysis of the production, representation, translation, and appropriation of ignorance, which of course does not only concern environmental issues.