Feminist technoscientific research with chemicals is proliferating. This critical commentary considers how this scholarship extends environmental justice research on pollution. We are concerned with two key questions: How can we do/design ethical research with chemicals? And, what methods allow for researching chemicals without resorting to an imagined space of purity? We consider unfolding projects which reorient relations with chemicals from villainous objects with violent effects, to chemical kin. We imagine chemical kinship as a concept, an analytical tool, and a mode of relating. Emerging through feminist and anticolonial work with chemicals, it involves a tentativeness towards making normative claims about chemicals because, like kin, these materials are never entirely good nor bad, at once they can both be enabling and harmful. This commentary considers what the unfolding research with chemicals generates, and consolidates conceptualisations of chemical kinship; we ultimately articulate an agenda for ethical research with chemicals as an experimental process of invention.

For the past several decades, global health research and policy have raised the alarm about the growing threat of counterfeit and low-quality drugs (henceforth 'fakes'). These high-profile and regularly-repeated claims about 'fake drugs' pepper scholarly publications, grey literature, and popular writing. We reviewed much of this work and found that it shares two characteristics that sit awkwardly alongside one another. First, it asserts that fake drugs constitute an urgent threat to lives. Second, it reports trouble with 'gaps' in the evidence on which their claims are based; that data is weaker and less conclusive than anticipated. Given the ubiquity of and urgency with these claims are made, we found this juxtaposition perplexing. To understand this juxtaposition better, we undertook a close reading of the strategies authors employed to negotiate and overcome data and evidence 'gaps' and asked questions about the cultures of scholarly publishing in global health research. We argue that a scholarly commitment to studying fakes despite--rather than because of-the evidence functions to support the continuation of similar research. It also works against asking different questions-for instance regarding the lack of easy access to pharmacological data that might make it possible to know fakes differently.

Introduction: Reducing motorised transport is crucial for achieving public health goals, but cars will continue to be essential for many in the medium term. The role of emerging technologies in mitigating the public health disadvantages of this private car use has been under-examined to date. Telematics are increasingly used by novice drivers in the UK to reduce insurance premiums. An exploratory study of novice drivers’ experiences of telematics identified implications for public health that warrant urgent further research. Methods: an exploratory qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews with 12 drivers aged 17–25 in three regions of the UK (Aberdeenshire, Hertfordshire and London). Results: Telematics were acceptable to young drivers, and reported to mitigate some negative health consequences of driving (injury risks, over-reliance on car transport), without reducing access to determinants of health such as employment or social life. However, there were suggestions that those at higher risk were less likely to adopt telematics. Conclusion: Market-based mechanisms such as telematics are potential alternatives to well-evaluated policy interventions such as Graduated Driver Licensing for reducing road injury risks for novice drivers, with a different mix of risks and benefits. However, claims to date from insurance companies about the contribution of telematics to public health outcomes should be evaluated carefully to account for biases in uptake.

OBJECTIVE: the Health and Social Care Act 2012 ('HSCA 2012') introduced a new, statutory, form of regulation of competition into the National Health Service (NHS), while at the same time recognising that cooperation was necessary. NHS England's policy document, the Five Year Forward View ('5YFV') of 2014 placed less emphasis on competition without altering the legislation. We explored how commissioners and providers understand the complex regulatory framework, and how they behave in relation to competition and cooperation. DESIGN: We carried out detailed case studies in four clinical commissioning groups, using interviews and documentary analysis to explore the commissioners' and providers' understanding and experience of competition and cooperation. SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: We conducted 42 interviews with senior managers in commissioning organisations and senior managers in NHS and independent provider organisations (acute and community services). RESULTS: Neither commissioners nor providers fully understand the regulatory regime in respect of competition in the NHS, and have not found that the regulatory authorities have provided adequate guidance. Despite the HSCA 2012 promoting competition, commissioners chose mainly to use collaborative strategies to effect major service reconfigurations, which is endorsed as a suitable approach by providers. Nevertheless, commissioners are using competitive tendering in respect of more peripheral services in order to improve quality of care and value for money. CONCLUSIONS: Commissioners regard the use of competition and cooperation as appropriate in the NHS currently, although collaborative strategies appear more helpful in respect of large-scale changes. However, the current regulatory framework contained in the HSCA 2012, particularly since the publication of the 5YFV, is not clear. Better guidance should be issued by the regulatory authorities.

This paper is based on ethnographic research of data practices in a public health project called Weather Health and Air Pollution. (All names are pseudonyms.) I examine two different kinds of practices that make air pollution data, focusing on how they relate to particular modes of sensing and articulating air pollution. I begin by describing the interstitial spaces involved in making measurements of air pollution at monitoring sites and in the running of a computer simulation. Specifically, I attend to a shared dimension of these practices, the checking of a numerical reading for error. Checking a measurement for error is routine practice and a fundamental component of making data, yet these are also moments of interpretation, where the form and meaning of numbers are ambiguous. Through two case studies of modelling and monitoring data practices, I show that making a ‘good’ (error free) measurement requires developing a feeling for the instrument–air pollution interaction in terms of the intended functionality of the measurements made. These affective dimensions of practice are useful analytically, making explicit the interaction of standardised ways of knowing and embodied skill in stabilising data. I suggest that environmental data practices can be studied through researchers’ materialisation of error, which complicate normative accounts of Big Data and highlight the non-linear and entangled relations that are at work in the making of stable, accurate data.