“A core scientific achievement in the permission-to-pollute system was the articulation of assimilative capacity – the theory that environments can handle a specific amount of contaminant before harm occurs…The threshold theory of pollution differentiates between contamination, as the mere presence of a pollutant, and pollution, as the manifestation of (scientifically!) demonstrable harm by pollutants when metabolism is overwhelmed. Assimilative capacity is based on land relations that strip away the complexities of Land - including relations to fish, spirits, humans, water, and other entities – in favour of elements relevant to settler and colonial goals for using the water as a sink, a site of storage for waste.”

~ Max Liboiron (2021). Pollution is Colonialism. Duke University Press. (pp. 39-40)