Environmental Injustice in Cancer Alley

Taylor Schullo

Intro to Environmental & Sustainability 

Parajuli

5 October 2022

Environmental Injustice in Cancer Alley

There is a disproportionate rate of humans who get cancer in America based on living location. The major of these people is the minority: people of color, poor, and under serviced. This is found in many cities, especially the 85 mile long road between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. This road is nicknamed Cancer Alley because of about 200 chemical plants and oil refiners along it. America’s minority live here because of a political process called Redlining; black and brown neighborhoods are marked with lower value. Industrial plants have little to no difficulty building in these neighborhoods because of the lower value and lack of representation in the government to stop these companies. Redlined communities are more likely to go to the hospital for asthma than any other area. Looking at a redlined map shows the disproportionate rate of black people, pollution, and health problems all in one area. 

   The industrial plants produce a variety of products: chloroprene, oil, gas, and plastics. For example, chloroprene is used to make computer screens but can cause kidney, liver, and digestive cancers as well as leukemia. Chloroprene is breathed in or absorbed through the skin. The families that live in Reserve, Louisiana along Cancer Alley ingest this chemical 400 times the legal safe limit. The elementary school of Reserve is only 1500 feet away from the chemical plant, so the community ingest these chemicals from an early age. Other known carcinogen chemicals released into this area include nickel, benzene, and PM2.5. These chemicals have side effects of heart disease, lung cancers, and asthma. Because COVID-19 causes more deaths with people with underlying conditions like the ones from polluted air, these communities have had the most deaths per capita because they face these underlying conditions. In Michigan, 14 percent of the population is black but they accounted for 41% of COVID-19 deaths. Studies found higher air pollutants meant higher COVID-19 deaths.

While many think the government would make laws stricter to release these chemicals, the opposite has been done. During Trump’s presidency, he suspended clean air protection laws across the country so there is no more oversight on how much pollution is going into the air. While activists like Robert Bullard, Wilma Subra, and Robert Taylor have written books, educated, and even sued chemical plants to fight this pollution in these areas.

Environment racism is how people of color face the problems of climate change and pollution more than any other group of people. This has caused serious health issues and death for people of color, so keeping these plants in black communities is racism itself. Environmental injustice is connected to environmental racism because when fighting for these communities of people you have to think about all the living things in that area: trees, animals, and the ecosystems that have died from the pollution. This is an injustice to the people that live near the pollution but also the environment it was placed into. As humans, we need to find a better way to produce these types of products.