The 85-mile stretch of land along the lower Mississippi River in Louisiana is one of the most studied industrial corridors in the country. Over the past several decades, advocates, scholars and journalists have published numerous reports detailing the dangerous concentrations of toxic chemicals in the environment and their effects on the health of the region’s residents, many of whom are black and low-income. This is why the area is known around the world as “Cancer Alley.”
A report published Thursday by Human Rights Watch sheds new light on the experiences of residents living near the region’s sprawling petrochemical complexes, detailing a first-of-its-kind analysis that found higher rates of low birth weight -outcomes found among women living in south Louisiana. In the areas with the worst pollution, e.g. found the report that more than a quarter of babies are born with low birth weights, more than double the state average.
The researchers place much of the blame on state regulators, who have repeatedly allowed plants in areas where the air is already choked with pollution and failed to enforce federal standards. To that end, Human Rights Watch recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency conduct an investigation into whether the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality should be the agency that administers the Clean Air Act in the state.
Human Rights Watch’s lead researcher on the report, Antonia Juhasz, told Grist that she hopes her team’s work will help spur change at the state and federal level. The organization, headquartered in New York, is best known for its work documenting the cases of prisoner activists, dictatorships and humanitarian conditions in crisis areas around the world, not for its North American-based research.
“We hoped that we could provide additional research by applying Human Rights Watch’s unique model of going in and documenting harm in a very careful, interview-by-interview process that has been applied to human rights around the world,” Juhasz said. said.
The study comes as the fossil fuel industry ramps up expansion across the region, with at least 19 new petrochemical projects in the works, and as southern Louisiana comes under greater scrutiny. In 2022, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, David Boyd, identified the area known as Cancer Alley as one of the 50 most polluted places on Earth. Boyd said these “sacrifice zones” represent “a stain on the collective conscience of humanity.”
Much of the new report is descriptive, painting a picture of giant industrial facilities spewing huge plumes of black smoke that float over the homes, schools and outdoor spaces where people live, work and play. Juhasz interviewed 37 residents living in the nine parishes between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and found that serious respiratory conditions such as bronchitis and asthma are common in children.
“Residents said these ailments added stress to pregnancies already at risk, led to children being rushed to emergency rooms and kept indoors to avoid polluted air, missed days of work and school, sleepless nights due to severe coughing, and the death of family members and friends,” the report said.
It also details the results of a yet-to-be-published study that found rates of low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds) rose as high as 27 percent in census tracts with high levels of air pollution. In contrast, the national rate 8.5 percent. (The analysis is currently under peer review for the publication Environmental Research: Health.) To supplement this research, Juhasz interviewed people like Ashley Gaignard, 46, a resident of Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish, which has the highest reported amount of toxic air pollution in the region, with more than 22 plants operating within its boundaries work. All three of Gaignard’s children had low birth weights and two were premature. Her son Jason (23) was born with an undeveloped lung. The condition contributed to severe lifelong asthma that led to frequent emergency room visits and nebulizer treatments.
Juhasz said this research is important because birth outcomes are not often considered in studies of exposure to toxic air pollutants. “Most women are unaware of this risk,” she said. “Most medical professionals are unaware of the risk. And so that information is not shared or acted upon.”
The report lays out a list of recommendations to various state and federal agencies to improve conditions in Cancer Alley. In particular, Juhasz and her team proposed that the EPA investigate whether it should revoke the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s authority to administer the Clean Air Act in the state. In addition to weak enforcement protocols and a permitting process that repeatedly allows more industrial development in black communities, the report states, the state agency definitely denied claims that residents who live near the region’s large chemical plants are getting sick from the pollution.
A former EPA staffer and air pollution expert, Scott Throwe, said he doubts such an investigation would be fruitful, and he can’t think of a time in his 30 years at the agency when one has been conducted. But he agreed with the report’s argument that the federal government’s lack of action in Cancer Alley was disappointing. At the start of his term in 2021, EPA Administrator Michael Regan pledged to make the excessive pollution in Black neighborhoods across the country a priority for cleanup, specifically taking Cancer Alley residents on a “toxic tour” of the South visit. More than three years later, Throwe said, not much has changed.
“I was happy to see Mr. Reagan’s initial efforts and intentions, but unfortunately, I really think the succession was just anemic,” he said. “I just don’t see the efforts to hold the states accountable.”
