Negotiating the “sins of the past”: PFAS-exposures and reproduction in the Danish Commonwealth

Kalaallit Nunaat, The Faroes, and Denmark have the highest levels of Per- and Polyfluorinated Substances (PFAS)-pollution in the world. However, the ways in which these “forever chemicals” come to matter across the three geographical contexts, connected by a colonial past and present, vary significantly. This article explores how colonial relations become entangled with chemical pollution and endocrine disruption in recent scandals concerning PFAS. We ask: whose reproduction appears to be under threat from PFAS-pollution? And how does the health of Danish Commonwealth babies come to matter differently? Based on an archive of scientific, parliamentary, and popular scientific debates in Kalaallit Nunaat, The Faroes, and Denmark, we discuss how toxicity becomes, in the case of Kalaallit Nunaat and The Faroes, animated through iconic nonhuman animals (such as polar bears and whales) and Kalaallit hunters, while it, in the case of Denmark, emerges as an alarm related to the pollution of white maternal bodies and images of vulnerable white children. The article brings new insights into the ways that toxins create reproductive trouble and emerge in Danish colonial and racialized relations.