Oil wastewater often contains high levels of radium, a carcinogenic and radioactive element. This article closely engages with two investigations of radium in groundwater downstream from oil wastewater storage pits. While one investigation found that radium did not travel beyond the storage pits, the other found evidence of elevated radium some two kilometers downstream. With an agential realist analysis, we resolve these differences, showing that these two experimental apparatuses defined and mobilized two different phenomena of radium, and of radium-as-contaminant. What geologists call ‘rock-water interactions’ are materially meaningful intra-actions. Far from being a mere philosophical gloss on otherwise conventional science, the ‘intra-’ signifies that, in these processes, the sediment and the groundwater are bringing each other into being. Groundwater sampling entails a specific set of intra-actions with the subsurface that enact different agential cuts. In addition, a geochemical focus on objects, rather than relations, also constrains understandings of chemical harm and accountability. These concepts do not only affect experimental apparatuses; rather, they come into being through and with each other. Therefore, rigorous approaches to groundwater and remediation do not lie in the pull to reify individual groundwater constituents, or to arbitrate between ‘contaminant’ and ‘contaminated’. Rather, rigorous approaches lie in the role of chemical relations in constituting specific groundwater phenomena. We elaborate three aspects of these relations: the constitution of radium-as-isolated-element through the ontological work of sampling schema, the formation of scale and attendant spacetimematterings within experimental apparatuses, and the work of contamination logics within conceptualizations of chemical harm. This analysis has major implications for understanding the potential harm of oil wastewater to groundwater.

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“污染”有什么作用？对地下水中石油废水和镭的代理现实主义描述


石油废水通常含有高浓度的镭，镭是一种致癌和放射性元素。本文密切参与了对石油废水储存坑下游地下水中镭的两项调查。虽然一项调查发现镭没有走出储存坑，但另一项调查发现了下游约 2 公里处镭升高的证据。通过能动性现实主义分析，我们解决了这些差异，表明这两个实验装置定义并动员了镭和镭作为污染物的两种不同现象。地质学家所说的“岩-水相互作用”是具有实质性意义的内部作用。“内部”远非仅仅是对传统科学的哲学修饰，而是意味着在这些过程中，沉积物和地下水相互形成。地下水采样需要与地下进行一组特定的内部作用，这些作用会执行不同的代理切割。此外，地球化学关注物体而不是关系，也限制了对化学危害和问责的理解。这些概念不仅影响实验仪器;相反，它们通过彼此并彼此一起产生。因此，严格的地下水和修复方法并不在于拉扯单个地下水成分，也不在于在“污染”和“污染”之间进行仲裁。相反，严格的方法在于化学关系在构成特定地下水现象中的作用。 我们详细阐述了这些关系的三个方面：通过采样图式的本体论工作构成镭作为分离元素，在实验设备中形成尺度和随之而来的时空问题，以及化学危害概念化中污染逻辑的工作。该分析对于了解石油废水对地下水的潜在危害具有重大意义。