Cancer Alley

A mound of oil drums near the Baton Rouge ExxonMobil Refinery along the Mississippi River in December 1972.

Cancer Alley (French: Allée du Cancer) is the regional nickname given to an 85-mile stretch of land^[1] along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, in the River Parishes of Louisiana, which contains over 150 petrochemical plants and refineries.^[2] This area accounts for 25% of the petrochemical production in the United States.^[3] In Cancer Alley, forty-six individuals per one million are at risk of developing cancer, compared with the national average of roughly thirty individuals per one million.^[3] The abnormally high cancer risk and concentration of petrochemical operations inspired the "Cancer Alley" moniker.

Additionally, researchers have found that racial disparity in cancer risk from air toxics worsen as minority concentration increases across the region.^[3] Individuals in black-dominant areas are 16% more at risk than those in white-dominant areas, and people in low-income tracts also bear a cumulative risk 12% more than those in high-income tracts.^[3] Community leaders such as Sharon Lavigne have led the charge in protesting the expansion of the petrochemical industry in Cancer Alley, as well as addressing the associated racial and economic disparities.^[4]

History[]

In 1987, when residents of one street in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, primarily African-American and low income, noticed the abundance of cancer cases within their community, “Cancer Alley” became the new name for Jacobs Drive. As similar incidences became more and more prevalent in surrounding areas, the “alley” grew to encompass an eighty-five mile stretch along the Mississippi River.

The St. James Parish, also known as Cancer Alley, has 49.1% people of color in its population, which more specifically consists of 48.8% African American residents and 0.3% from other groups. This parish also has 16.6% of its population living in poverty (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/stjamesparishlouisiana/PST045219). An analysis of pollution and community advocacy in ‘Cancer Alley’: setting an example for the environmental justice movement in St James Parish, Louisiana. Local Environment, 11(6), 647-661, DOI: 10.1080/13549830600853700.</ref> However, this demographic is not reflected in the employment at the manufacturing plants. Surveying 11 plants in the St. James Parish, researchers found that these plants only employed between 4.9% and 19.4% African Americans, which is remarkably low in comparison to the overall population.^[5]

In 2019, Louisiana had the fifth-highest death rate from cancer in the United States [1]. While the national average is 149.09 deaths per 100,000, Louisiana's rate was 168.1 deaths per 100,000. However, according to the American Cancer Society's Statistics Center [2], Louisianans' risk factors for cancer rank similarly to national averages in many categories, although overweight and obesity prevalence ranked 3rd and 4th in the nation in 2017 and 2018 according to the same article. Louisiana ranked 6th highest in the nation for the number of people who get cancer, or incidence, between 2014-2018 [3].

In 2018, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data showed that Louisiana ranked fifth throughout the nation for total releases per square mile. Louisiana, which has a population of 4.67 million, produced 8.9 billion pounds of waste in 2018, which is down from 9.4 billion in 2000 which is a 5.3% improvement despite population and industry growth over the same time period. Back in 2002, seven of the ten plants in the state with the largest combined on- and offsite releases are located in Cancer Alley, and four of the ten plants with the largest onsite releases in the state are located there.^[6][7]

In 1969, DuPont opened a plant to manufacture the chemical chloroprene, the main ingredient in neoprene. The plant was sold in 2015^[8] to Japanese chemical company Denka. The area immediately adjacent to the Denka/Dupont neoprene plant in St. John the Baptist Parish has been recognized by the EPA as having the likelihood of getting cancer from air pollution over 700 times the national average.^[9][10]

Cancer Alley is a well known environmental sacrifice zone in the field of environmental justice. A sacrifice zone is defined as a geographical area that has been contaminated by dangerous chemical pollution. This term originated as “National Sacrifice Zones” during the Cold War to describe areas contaminated by the mining and processing of uranium to create nuclear weapons. Today, the term has been shortened and its definition expanded to include any location facing disproportionate exposure to dangerous pollutants, especially when in low-income and BIPOC communities. ^[11]

Community organizing[]

The injustices of Cancer Alley have resulted in many instances of community organizing, where people living in a particular area work together to fight for their shared interests. Typically, this involves historically underrepresented groups.^[12] Cancer Alley is home to some particularly successful examples of community organizing that have been taking place since the 1970s, especially in the battle to prevent new factories from being built in this 85-mile stretch of land.^[13]

In 1996, Shintech Inc. announced that they would be creating three new polyvinyl chloride (PVC) manufacturing plants in Convent, Louisiana. The state of Louisiana issued Shintech permits to proceed with the project in 1997, despite their acknowledgement that these locations would be adding 623,000 pounds of pollutants to the air annually. The population within a five mile radius of the site of the plants is 81% African American, compared to the overall parish population which is 49% African American.^[14]

The residents of Convent did not take this decision lightly. In response, a coalition called St. James Citizens for the Environment (SJCJE) drew the attention of many legal groups, including the Tulane University Environmental Law Clinic and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. The combination of community organizers and larger groups were able to wage various legal battles against the company, and in 1998, Shintech decided to withdraw their project plans.^[15]

Another notable example of community organizing within Cancer Alley is a march organized in 1988 by the Gulf Coast Tenants Association and Greenpeace. These groups led protesters across the parish in an effort to raise awareness of the health and environmental concerns posed by manufacturing. One major win for the environmental justice movement came in 1992, when the 750 residents of the small town of Wallace waged a legal battle that eventually convinced the company Formosa to build their rayon and pulp processing plant elsewhere.^[16]

However, Formosa Plastics Corporation’s intentions to further cement St. James Parish’s sacrificial zone did not stop there, nor did community organizing and resistance. Formosa Plastics proposed the Sunshine Project, the $9.4 billion industrial complex to be located on the west bank of St. James Parish that is estimated to become the petrochemical and plastics project with the single greatest environmental detriment, at an estimated 13,628,086 tons of greenhouse gas emissions yearly.^[17] The proposed complex would span 2,500 acres and will be situated one mile from an elementary school,^[18] much to the alarm of community members and environmental activists. On January 15, 2020, RISE St. James, a faith-based grassroots organization of St. James Parish community members, in conjunction with the nonprofit conservation organization Center for Biological Diversity, the grassroots organization Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and the nonprofit Healthy Gulf, sued the Trump administration for permitting Formosa Plastics’ proposed petrochemical complex. The lawsuit seeks to invalidate the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ fast-tracked Clean Water Act permits that the Corps issued the year prior.^[19] It had come to light that independent archaeologists that Formosa Plastics hired had discovered that enslaved people were buried in unmarked graves beneath the 2,300 acre site that Formosa planned to develop their plastics complex on.^[20] Citing violation of federal laws in the approval of destroying wetlands, the region’s first and quickly dwindling line of defense against progressively-intensifying natural disasters, as well as the failure to protect the water, air, and health of the surrounding communities, and the violation of the National Historical Preservation Act in failing to protect the burial grounds of enslaved people, the lawsuit demands the rescinding of the permits issued in September 2019 as well as the conducting of a full environmental impact study.^[21] On November 4, 2020, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced its plans to suspend its permit for the Sunshine Project,^[22] a refreshing victory for the organizations and individuals seeking environmental justice.

While developments in Formosa Plastics Corporation in St. James Parish remain to be monitored, the multigenerational disenfranchisement and exploitation of Black people and people of Color are difficult to ignore. “One oppressive economy begets another,” says Barbara L. Allen on the subject, a professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech. She continues, “The Great River Road was built on the bodies of enslaved Black people. The chemical corridor is responsible for the body burden of their descendants.”^[23] Her words are particularly poignant in relation to the economic stimulation and job creation that is promised with the proposal of each new plant in the area, while a tiny minority of full-time industry jobs are actually filled by community members who bear the brunt of the pollution burden – for example, in St. Gabriel of Iberville Parish where there now lives 30 large petrochemical plants within a 10-mile radius, only 9% of the full-time industry jobs in city are held by local residents, and at least one in four residents live in poverty.^[24] The promised economic prosperity in these major investments has never yet to be delivered, yet continues to be a cited reason for the continued approval of petrochemical permits.^[25]

Criticism[]

On March 2, 2021, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee discussed the continued industrial projects along the Mississippi River in Louisiana. The UN council on contemporary racism strongly condemned what they defined as environmental racism in their discussion with experts and other UN officials:

This form of environmental racism poses serious and disproportionate threats to the enjoyment of several human rights of its largely African American residents, including the right to equality and non-discrimination, the right to life, the right to health, right to an adequate standard of living and cultural rights.

The sentiments stated by environmental activists are echoed through this condemnation posted by the United Nation's Human Rights Commission.^[26]

On January 27, 2021, United States President Joe Biden signed an executive order regarding environmental justice and specifically cited Cancer Alley as a hard hit area.^[27] Louisiana Chemical Association President Greg Bowser responded to President Biden's remarks on the region, refuting claims that residents of the industrial corridor have a higher risk of developing cancer in multiple articles.^[28][29] Furthermore, he cited Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR) data to support his claims.^[30][31] The LTR shows that there have not been an increase in cancer deaths connected to industrial pollution.^[31]

Activists and locals have combated the LTR. Activists claim the census tracts utilized for the LTR cover large areas and the data does not allow for specific locations next to chemical plants to be viewed individually.^[32] Moreover, the registry relies on medical records to distinguish if cancer was the cause of death. Locals are concerned that COVID-19 deaths will not attribute statistically to cancer if the victims were suffering from it.^[33] Another statistical concern for locals is that people will not seek medical help before they die because of monetary or social reasons.^[33] Louisiana health officials may not release the specific cases and data because of medical privacy laws.^[34]

Cancer studies[]

In their 2012 book Petrochemical America, photographer Richard Misrach and Columbia University architecture professor Kate Orff explore the social, environmental, and health impacts of the petrochemical industry in Cancer Alley through photography, writing, and infographic-style illustrations.^[35]

In popular culture[]

British industrial metal band Godflesh used a digitally altered image of a crucifix in front of Cancer Alley as the cover art for their 1996 album, Songs of Love and Hate.

Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild discusses the environmental and health conditions in Cancer Alley, as well as the socioeconomic and political ramifications, in her 2016 book Strangers in Their Own Land.^[36]

See also[]

• Cancer cluster
• Love Canal
• Valley of the Drums
• McCastle v. Rollins Environmental Services
• Environmental justice
• Environmental racism
• Environmental Racism in the United States

References[]

Further reading[]

• Nitzkin JL (April 1992). "Cancer in Louisiana: a public health perspective". J la State Med Soc. 144 (4): 162. PMID 1613306.
• The documentary film "Fuel" by Josh Tickell. [www.thefuelfilm.com]

External links[]

• Cancer Alley, Louisiana from Pollutionissues.com
• Cancer Alley: Myth or Fact?, Unwelcome Neighbors: How the poor bear the burdens of America's pollution. New Orleans Times-Picayune.
• Cancer Alley. BBC.
• Cancer Alley: Big Industry, Big Problems at MSNBC