A hydrological breakdown of containment logics: Toxic exposures, pollution, and waste in the waterways of settler-colonial Australia

Social science scholarship has long explored the spatial, political and embodied dimensions of contamination, attending to the ways pollutants are unevenly distributed and unreliably contained. In this framing, waste is relegated elsewhere , to people and places deemed expendable. However, while exposures to waste and other forms of contamination remain deeply uneven, we are also witnessing a shift into a new era in which toxic exposures are increasingly inescapable for everybody on this planet. In this paper we ask: If waste is a relation that relies on othering, what happens when it begins to overflow its neat containment, seeping into spaces previously protected by wealth and privilege? We situate this enquiry in the context of recent pollutant events in settler-colonial Australia, examining three case studies that emerged across 2024 and 2025: 1) “Tar balls” comprised of faeces, drugs, and oil; 2) cases of melioidosis caused by a bacteria referred to as the “mud bug”, and 3) PFAS, so called “forever chemicals”. Though differing in form and scale, each of these contamination events emerges in or through water, and travels across bodies, ecologies, and infrastructures. Drawing from approaches in critical discourse analysis (CDA), environmental humanities, toxic geographies, and feminist science and technology studies (STS), we analyse media reporting on these particular pollutant events as representative of our shifting relationship to toxicity in a chemically saturated world. We argue for a hydrological approach, informed by hydrosocial scholarship, that thinks with water's relational qualities to challenge the settler-colonial logics of purity and containment that underpin contemporary understandings of toxicity, pollution, and waste. The emergence of contaminants in the privileged spaces of Australia's waterways may signal the breakdown of containment logics but also an opening: a chance to reconfigure our relationship to toxicity and toxic living.