Louisiana must examine how polluters imperil the health of Black residentsIn a letter sent to state regulators last week, the Environmental Protection Agency stated that it had received civil rights complaints about air quality in the area known as Cancer Alley.
The agency found that southeastern Louisiana’s black residents are at greater risk of developing cancer due to industrial air pollution. Children at a predominantly Black elementary school were exposed at levels 11 times the EPA considered acceptable.
ProPublicaIt was reported last year by the EPA that the EPA does a poor job of regulatingThe combined risk of multiple sources of industrial pollution. Parts of Cancer Alley ProPublica estimated lifetime cancer risk is up to 47 timesWhat the EPA considers acceptable.
The EPA letter urged Louisiana’s environmental and health agencies to analyze cumulative impacts for residents near a synthetic rubber plant owned by Denka Performance Elastomer in St. John the Baptist Parish and a proposed Formosa plastics facility in St. James Parish.
Wilma Subra is an environmental health expert who advises the community in the area. ProPublica’s reporting “confirmed the importance of cumulative risk and made it a focus that could not be ignored.”
“What’s remarkable is that EPA, for the first time in a long time, is speaking the truth around environmental racism and willing to put civil rights enforcement tools out there,” said Monique Harden, assistant director of law and public policy at the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. Federal civil rights protections predate the EPA, but they haven’t been enforced, she said: “There’s nothing new to any of this except that we have leadership at the EPA” that “wants to do something about it.”
The EPA urged all state regulators to follow its lead. move students out of St. John the Baptist Parish’s Fifth Ward Elementary School, where air monitoring found high levels of chloroprene, a potent carcinogen. The letter, which summarizes the agency’s initial findings, cites years of data, studies and state policies to show how Black residents are disproportionately harmed by air pollution and how those disparities are baked into the region’s history. It explains the relationship between the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, and the Louisiana Department of Health. dismissed residents’ concerns about air quality, underplayed the dangersUse of chloroprene conducted flawed health studies mischaracterized air monitoring data.
“We take these concerns very seriously and are committed to health equity — which is why we are fully cooperating with the EPA’s investigation into Denka,” the state health department said in a statement.
In an email, an LDEQ spokesperson said the agency is “committed to working with EPA” and remains “confident that we are implementing our air permitting program in a manner that is fully consistent with” federal and state laws.
Local activists have fought for environmental protections since the beginning. Robert Taylor, the executive director of Concerned Citizens of St. John said he started his organization after attending an EPA meeting in 2016 that revealed high levels of chloroprene at the school. “I went from fear to anger to shock,” he said, that “the government was allowing people to do this.”
The Denka facility produces neoprene. This synthetic rubber is used to make wetsuits. It is located approximately 1,500 feet from the public school. DuPont began producing neoprene in the area in 1969. sold the neoprene operationDenka in 2015. It is the nation’s only industrial site that emits chloroprene.
EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan visited the nearby school last fall as part of his “Journey to Justice” trip that was announced two days after ProPublica’s investigation into pollution hot spots. He later sent a letter to Denka and DuPont that stated, “As a parent, I remain extremely concerned” about the “health and well-being of the students.” Three-quarters of Fifth Ward Elementary’s students are Black.
A DuPont spokesperson declined to comment on EPA’s letter to Louisiana regulators but shared a response it sent to Regan in March in response to his letter about the school. In its response, DuPont said that Denka, not DuPont, operates the neoprene facility, and that tens of thousands of residents have worked at DuPont’s adjoining facility. The workers’ children have attended Fifth Ward Elementary, the company said, and “we care deeply about its success.”
DuPont is “committed to continue to work with Denka,” regulators and the community “to maintain the strong ties and supporting efforts needed to keep St. John Parish a safe and great place to work and live,” the company added.
In 2010, the EPA published a report classifying chloroprene as a “likely human carcinogen.”The chemical chloroprene is a mutagen, meaning it causes cancer by mutating and attacking DNA. Children and infants are at greatest risk from mutagens because their cells divide so much faster than those of adults.
Recent air monitoring data from Denka, collected about 1,000 feet from the school, showed average concentrations 11 times what EPA considers acceptable, according to the agency’s letter. EPA collected air samples from school grounds over the years and found concentrations up to 83 times the acceptable guideline.
Jim Harris, a spokesperson for Denka, said in a written statement that the EPA’s chloroprene limit is “based on a faulty and outdated exposure model.”
The company asked the EPA to revise its chloroprene guidelines last year, arguing that the model used was not “sufficiently rigorous.” The EPA refuted Denka’s conclusions this spring, stating that the company did not identify any errors with the agency’s analysis.
“There is simply no evidence of increased levels of health impacts near” the plant, Harris wrote. “Data compiled by the Louisiana Tumor registry (LTR) have repeatedly shown for decades there are no widespread elevated rates of cancer in the parish or in the census tracts neighboring the facility compared with state averages.”
Kim Terrell, a research scientist at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, argued that the registry’s census-tract-level data obscures health effects in the communities closest to industrial facilities. The data of the tumor registry has also been criticized. should not be used to represent cancer ratesFor smaller populations, like those living near industrial fences.
“The cancer rates Denka cited are not specific to the people who have been most exposed to chloroprene,” Terrell said.
Harris, the Denka spokesperson, said the company has “invested over $35 million to reduce its emissions by over 85 percent” since purchasing the facility in 2015 and conducted community air monitoring that showed similar reductions.
The EPA’s letter acknowledged the reduced concentrations, which resulted from an enforcement order from LDEQ. “There is no question, however,” the EPA wrote, “that elevated cancer risk for residents of all ages and school children still exists and has existed as a result of breathing air polluted with chloroprene and that this risk has impacted and currently impacts Black residents disproportionately.”
Taylor, the community advocate, said the letter indicates the agency is “considering our humanity” and “doing what we consider is the right thing.” For too long, he said, residents have operated under the assumption that “our government has abandoned us — we are just sacrifice zones.”
Taylor, a lifelong resident of St. John the Baptist Parish recalled how his children used run into the house to escape the fumes that made them hurt. He lives five blocks from the Denka plant, close enough to hear announcements from the company’s loudspeakers. He has grandkids, great-grandkids, and great-grandkids all of whom attended local schools. One such school is the Catholic school located next to Fifth Ward Elementary.
The EPA letter is a reply to civil rights complaints filed on behalf of Taylor’s organization, the Sierra Club and other groups. The complaints cite Title VI, 1964 Civil Rights Act. This bans federal funding of state agencies whose policies or activities discriminate based upon race.
The act prohibits both intentional discrimination and disparate impact regardless of intent, said Deena Tumeh, an associate attorney at Earthjustice who helped file the complaints for Taylor’s group. The EPA’s letter noted that 93% of the residents within a mile of the Denka plant are Black, and the Formosa plant is slated for a census tract where 90% of the population is Black, compared to 50% in the overall parish. These demographic patterns can be traced back as far as the Reconstruction era when many Black families were able purchase small parcels near plantations. Over time, the plantations were replaced by large petrochemical facilities, while the descendants of those families continued to live in rural, unincorporated towns that became “fence line” communities.
A judge stopped progress on the Formosa plant last month. withdrawing its air permits. The judge’s decision cited the fact that state regulators failed to assess cumulative impacts from multiple sources, even though the location suffers from significant existing toxic air pollution that would be exacerbated by the proposed facility’s emissions. LDEQ appealed the decision. Formosa didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“For years, Title VI letters went to a closet and died,” but this EPA is talking to people and investigating seriously, said Darryl Malek-Wiley, a senior organizing representative at the Sierra Club.
Malek-Wiley, who helped popularize the term “Cancer Alley” in the 1980s, said the real test of the EPA’s dedication to equity will come once it negotiates specific terms with the two Louisiana agencies. Tumeh said the agreement could include the recommendations from the EPA’s letter, as well as additional requirements. This process could take several months.
