HASfter the fire at the Lubrizol factory, in Rouen, on September 26, 2019, the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, spoke of odors “disturbing, painful but not harmful”while Elisabeth Borne, then Minister of Labour, affirmed that there was no “no abnormal pollutants”. A few historical readings would have allowed them to know that the notion of “inconvenient, but not unhealthy nuisance” is a rhetorical leitmotiv built from the 1800s to legitimize industrial life and the sacrifice of environmental health.
By its seriousness, the fire of Lubrizol mediatized the existence of the thousand of accidents which take place each year in the factories located in metropolitan France, whereas the reports of the World Health Organization alert for a long time on the effects harmful effects of pollution on public health. However, the political milieu continues to rely on the promises of the future and on hypothetical technical horizons. The acceptability of pollution, which has become “normal”is actually an invention of the contemporary world, which is not self-evident over the long term.
Since 1810 and the Napoleonic decree on unhealthy and dangerous industrial establishments, the first legislation in the world on pollution, public regulation has been designed to protect industrialists, secure their productive capital and avoid criminal prosecution by putting them under the surveillance of a benevolent administration. It was about freeing them from the old public health-conscious “nuisance police”, which was very coercive before the 1800s.
Even after the reforms of 1917 and 1976, and the transposition of the European Seveso directives, laws and regulations give precedence to the protection of industrial interests (through preventive investigations necessary for operating permits) by creating, against financial compensation, a right to pollute, and by relying on technical improvement to solve the problems observed.
As a result, institutional responses to industrial risk have remained mainly technical. Admittedly, the post-Lubrizol parliamentary reports of 2020 have shown the weakness of inspection in the face of industrial rhythms that put public action up against the wall, and the increase in industrial risks as forms of employment become more precarious. and the extension of subcontracting chains in petrochemical sites. By advocating, moreover, the need to organize health monitoring of populations in industrial areas, they proposed an unprecedented approach in the regulation of nuisances.
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