What is America’s “Cancer Corridor” and why is living there so dangerous?

Cancer seems to be everywhere in Eve Butler’s life.

“On my street I know three people, two from the same family, who had cancer at the same time. My brothers have friends who have died prematurely or are sick, they have breathing problems, leukemia, asthma…”

Butler, who also had breast cancer, lives in St. James County, Louisiana, within what is known in the United States as the “Cancer Alley”.

In these 100 miles between Baton Rouge and the touristy city of New Orleans there are more than 150 petrochemical facilities and refineries.

Their activity permeates the air with the stench of gasoline and toxic substances classified as potentially carcinogenic by the United States Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The risk of contracting cancer for its inhabitants, mostly African-Americans, is 50 times higher than the national average, according to the EPA.

In counties like St. John the Baptist, the risk of getting cancer is between 200 and 400 people per million and it is associated with the emissions of ethylene oxide and chloroprene, two powerful toxins.

The numbers contrast with the rest of the state of Louisiana, where it ranks between 6 and 50 per million.

The president of the USA, Joe Biden, said shortly after arriving at the White House that he wants to address “the disproportionate health, environmental and economic impact on communities of color, especially in hard-hit areas like the Cancer Corridor in Louisiana.”

“The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality it has the main responsibility to implement the programs of the Clean Air Act, including the monitoring of emissions and air quality, and to enforce the regulations ”, an EPA spokesperson told BBC Mundo.

The state’s environmental quality department, for its part, argues that “the air quality in Louisiana is quite good.”

“We comply with the regulation. We respect all the criteria on pollutants of the EPA ”, he tells BBC Mundo Gregory Langley, the spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Health.

Eve Butler, however, has a different experience than the Louisiana authorities.

“It doesn’t just smell different. On a couple of occasions I went out without an umbrella. It started to rain and my hair and face got wet. Days after, my skin started to sag. I am a person with brown skin and it looked like I had sunburn, “he tells BBC Mundo Butler.

From his window, when he gets up every morning, what he sees are six storage tanks used by the petrochemical company installed in front of your house.

“The grass is discolored, the trees are not as green as they used to be, and sometimes black things grow on some of the plants that until recently were healthy,” he says.

“Environmental racism”

The concentration of toxic-emitting factories is so overwhelming here that it has caught the attention of the United Nations.

The body describes what happens in the Cancer Corridor as a form of “environmental racism.”

“The petrochemical corridor along the Mississippi River has not only polluted the surrounding water and air, but also has subjected its residents, mostly African American, to cancer, respiratory diseases and other adverse health effects, “UN human rights experts said this year.

“This form of environmental racism poses serious and disproportionate threats to various human rights of its residents,” they stated.

According to EPA data cited by the UN, in St. James County, where Butler lives, the incidence of cancer in black communities is 105 cases per million, while in the districts of the area where the white population lives, the incidence is 60 cases per million.

Butler, 64, was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and although it was contained and had not spread throughout his body, he had to undergo surgery and lost his left breast.

“I have a daughter and two grandchildren. I told my daughter that she had to move to another place to live because St. James County is not a safe place. The only immediate family members close to me now are my mother and one of my eight siblings, ”he adds.

Something similar happens to Marylee Orr, also a resident of the area and an activist against pollution.

“Many of residents would leave if they had the money, they would abandon everything. They would go to another part of Louisiana or wherever they wanted. Right now they can’t even have a birthday party for their children in the garden because it smells very bad or they start coughing and it is difficult for them to breathe, ”he explains.

Air pollution and cancer

Kimberly Terrell and Gianna St. Julien are research scientists at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and authors of the report “Toxic Air Pollution and Cancer in Louisiana” released last June.

Both agree that there is strong evidence of a link between air pollution and cancer rates.

“In Louisiana, specifically, there are more kilograms of Toxic industrial air pollution released into the air than in any other state in the country, ”explains St. Julien.

“There are three main air pollutants. The first is the benzene, which commonly comes from burning gasoline from oil refineries. The second is the formaldehyde, another industrial toxicant pretty common, ”says Terrell.

“And finally we have the ethylene oxide. In 2016 the EPA determined that it caused 30 times more cancer than previously thought. It is produced in the manufacture of plastic ”, explains the scientist.

And those three are the most common. But there is a much longer list and some communities are dealing with pollutants that are even more unusual, ”he adds.

The Louisiana Department of the Environment told BBC Mundo that it “does not agree with the methodology or conclusions of the report” by Terrell and St. Julien.

The petrochemical tradition

The petrochemical industry in the Cancer Corridor began with the opening of a Standard Oil refinery in Baton Rouge in 1908, and skyrocketed to more than 300 installations during the last century.

The reasons for this type of industry to establish itself in this area are a mixture of geographical and social circumstances, but also political ones.

To start, explain Craig E. ColtenEmeritus professor in the department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, the state is home to abundant oil deposits that have been exploited since the early 1900s, in addition to other natural resources such as salt or gas.

The second attraction of the area is that the Mississippi River is a waterway that allows the passage of ships and the transport of goods and waste from areas as far from the sea as Baton Rouge, which is about 200 miles from the river mouth.

Another factor is tax exemptions for the establishment of these types of companies in Louisiana.

A state that, despite having one of the most industrialized areas, is one of the poorest in America.

While the country has 10.5% of people living in poverty, Louisiana reaches 19%, according to the census.

Median household income in the United States is nearly $ 63,000, while in the state it is only $ 49,500.

Low labor costs, a state government that encourages the arrival of new companies with tax exemptions, as well as lax environmental policies and laws They are, for Professor Colten, factors that have allowed the world’s leading power to also host one of the most polluted places on earth.

“Since 1997, huge toxic releases have been allowed in the Corridor region, dumping more than 65.5 million kilograms of chemicals into the environment and forever changing the landscape of industry in southeastern Louisiana,” says Professor Colten.

Marcos Orellana, Special Rapporteur for the United Nations and an expert lawyer in international law, human rights and the environment, affirms that what happens in the Cancer Corridor is no accident.

“What exists is a concerted and systematic policy of the Louisiana state authorities to privilege the location of highly polluting industries in the places where the population lives. Afro-descendant population”, He says in conversation with BBC Mundo.

“Even if we look at, for example, the Formosa company’s Sunshine project, which intends to open a huge facility to produce plastics, the land use in the county was changed to allow the project where Afro-descendant communities lived,” he says.

“While the county authorities themselves prohibited the location of other petrochemical plants in the places where white people live.”

“So, there is not a coincidence here, but an open discrimination based on race,” he says.

“The facilities have literally surrounded the Afro-descendant communities that live there with incessant toxic contamination,” he adds.

BBC Mundo contacted the Louisiana governor’s office to ask him about the accusations of the UN rapporteur, but until the moment of publication, there was no response.

The Formosa plastics plant

Despite complaints, EPA data, and scientific studies, the petrochemical industry continues to grow in the area.

Orellana, the UN rapporteur, mentioned above a megaplan known as The Sunshine Project to build a petrochemical complex worth US $ 9.4 billion in just over nine square kilometers.

Everything belongs to the same company, the Taiwanese petrochemical company Formosa, one of the world leaders in the manufacture of plastics.

For years, company executives have been trying to get the permits to make the 14 facilities that are part of the project a reality along the Mississippi River.

The plan includes the construction of chemical plants, docks for ships and barges, intake lines, a railway connection, power generation plants and a wastewater treatment plant.

Janile Parks, director of Community and Government Relations for Formosa, said in an email to BBC Mundo that “The Cancer Corridor does not exist.”

“There is no scientific evidence that cancer rates in the Louisiana Industrial Corridor, which includes St. James Parish, where it is found The Sunshine Project, are higher due to industrial activity, “he argued based on data from the Louisiana Tumor Registry, an agency that belongs to the State University School of Public Health.

Local media reported that the Democratic governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, supports the project as the economic engine of its state.

But neighborhood associations and activists from St. James County, the same one to which Eve Butler belongs, they have been fighting the company for years and in recent months, various reports suggest that the battle could be on his side.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers has ordered an environmental review of the Formosa project in Louisiana, temporarily paralyzing the company’s plans.

This is a small win for women like Eve Butler and Marylee Orr.

“Over the years I have lost a lot of people,” Orr tells BBC Mundo.

“Friends, neighbors, co-workers.”

“They will say that cancer rates in Louisiana are higher because people are fat, eat poorly, or smoke. But the truth is that my community suffers from asthma, skin rashes and nosebleeds for no apparent reason ”.

“When we started the association where I work, another mother and I co-led it. Her name was Ramona Stevens. When they detected the cancer, it was already all over his body and he died at the age of 39, leaving two children, ”Orr recalls.

“And this has continued to happen. It has continued all the time ”.