ABSTRACT: In 2010, the Environmental Working Group announced that Norman, Oklahoma’s tap water had the highest levels in the nation of what it called the “Erin Brockovich Chemical” – hexavalent chromium. Erin Brockovich famously investigated Pacific Gas & Electric’s contamination of drinking water with hexavalent chromium. For many Norman residents, the Erin Brockovich Chemical immediately established a narrative of industrial pollution, cancer clusters, and government coverups. The encounter between the Erin Brockovich Chemical narrative and the city of Norman’s struggles with hexavalent chromium complicates scholarly understandings of toxic uncertainty. Scholars have documented the intentional production of toxic uncertainty – the creation of doubt about the health implications of contaminants that companies rely on for profit. The Erin Brockovich Chemical narrative, however, reveals an additional dimension of uncertainty that is rooted in expectations of contamination. The Norman case demonstrates that NGOs, bloggers, and environmental activists also contribute to toxic uncertainty by advancing powerful narratives about industrial contamination. City of Norman employees advanced a counter-narrative, noting that Norman’s tap water meets Environmental Protection Agency regulations and hexavalent chromium occurs naturally in the local aquifer, but this did little to create confidence in the city’s tap water. As I researched Norman’s water supply, I increasingly struggled to reach any form of certainty regarding the toxicity of hexavalent chromium in the tap water. The film Erin Brockovich offers surprising clues about how to alleviate this uncertainty by drawing attention to how toxic uncertainty is related to the struggle to care for others. In a context of late industrialism in which trust in state expertise has significantly eroded, Erin Brockovich demonstrates that access to care can provide the time to research, organize, and engage in policy debates.
Daniel Mains (2026) studied this question.