Nuestros Suelos: exploring new forms of public engagement with polluted soils
Date
2022
Type:
Article
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Abstract
Despite being a critical environmental problem, soil pollution is not usually
considered as a relevant issue by the general public. This disinterest
derives from traditional procedures to assess soil pollution that are quite
complex and costly, not considering any form of citizen involvement.
Seeking to challenge this situation, the project “Nuestros Suelos” (Our Soil)
aimed at designing and testing a low-cost participative soil pollution
assessment toolkit. The final prototype included several participative
modules, going from an assessment of the history of local soils to
measuring heavy metals such as Arsenic and Copper. Tested with
low-income communities in northern Chile, the toolkit was able not only to
produce multiple kinds of data but also a public that started to understand
and care about the issue.
Description
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Citation
Ureta, Sebastián; Miriam Llona; Delia Rodríguez-Oroz; Daniel Valenzuela; Carolina Trujillo-Espinoza; Consuelo Guiñez; Alejandro Rebolledo; María José Maiza; Camilo Rodríguez Beltrán(2022). Nuestros Suelos: exploring new forms of public engagement with polluted soils Journal of Science Communication 21(01)
Keywords
Citizen science, Public engagement with science and technology, Risk communication, Soil pollution, Open hardware technologies, Chile