This talk examines how different social and technological bodies—including e-waste workers, environmental scientists, and E-noses—perceive and engage with the pervasive toxic smell in Guiyu, an e-waste recycling hub in China severely affected by the chemical pollution produced through e-waste processing. The residual smell of crude e-waste recycling practices functions as a sensory modality that traces the environmental violence of the global e-waste economy. It exemplifies what I call ""secondhand extraction"": a form of extraction within the recycling economy that not only generates but also mediates an alternative, secondary, yet equally powerful set of material, environmental, and political relations.

I argue that the concept of environmental sensitivity is key to understanding both the lived experience of chemical saturation and China’s model of environmental governance as it takes on distinct meanings across contexts. On the one hand, it refers to a subjective, bodily quality—the degree of sensitivity of one’s olfactory faculties. On the other, it operates as a scientific metric for measuring a community’s vulnerability to environmental hazards, which in turn shapes the state distribution of land use and ownership. To grasp the complexities of local environmental politics in China, we must understand how these two layers of sensitivity, bodily and bureaucratic, intertwine paradoxically.

Tinghao Zhou is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the intersections of media theory, environmental humanities and justice, science and technology studies, critical infrastructure studies, and digital cultures in China and beyond. His current book project, _At the Ends of Media_, explores the material and political impacts of the global media economy on local communities, labor conditions, and ecologies. He currently serves as Associate and Review Editor of _Media+Environment_.