This roundtable aims to unsettle potentially restrictive framings of environmental justice in polluted communities and
interrogate the implications of a focus on damages and on resistance to pollution. The mobilisation of some fenceline communities does not see the participation of all residents, but only of specific actors whose advocacy aligns with the framings of justice that fit mainstream discourse.

The panel will discuss avenues for the making of a public anthropology beyond toxic exposure as an entry point to remediate environmental injustice. This entails breaking up the notions of suffering, action, and advocacy from
the scientific narrative on toxic exposure to enable geographies of the otherwise (Povinelli 2011). In doing so, the panel will also discuss strategies for engaging with communities, institutions, and other actors to overcome the epistemic tensions arising from rejecting scientific data on pollution as the route to address environmental injustice.