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<h1 class="Post-feature-title"
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href="https://theintercept.com/2017/03/24/a-louisiana-town-plagued-by-pollution-shows-why-cuts-to-the-epa-will-be-measured-in-illnesses-and-deaths/"
data-reactid=".ti.1.0.0.2.1.0.0.0">The Plant Next Door</a></h1>
<h2 class="Post-feature-subtitle"
data-reactid=".ti.1.0.0.2.1.0.1"><a
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href="https://theintercept.com/2017/03/24/a-louisiana-town-plagued-by-pollution-shows-why-cuts-to-the-epa-will-be-measured-in-illnesses-and-deaths/"
data-reactid=".ti.1.0.0.2.1.0.1.0">A Louisiana Town
Plagued by Pollution Shows Why Cuts to the EPA Will Be
Measured in Illnesses and Deaths</a></h2>
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<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Sharon Lerner - <span
class="PostByline-date"
data-reactid=".ti.1.0.0.3.0.1.0.1.0.4">March 24 2017</span></div>
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<p><span class="dropcap">W</span><u>hen the Environmental</u>
Protection Agency informed people in St. John the
Baptist Parish, Louisiana, last July that the local
neoprene plant was emitting a chemical that gave them
the highest risk of cancer from air pollution in the
country, the information was received not just with
horror and sadness but also with a certain sense of
validation.</p>
<p>For years, many of the people living on this little
square of land between the train tracks and the
Mississippi River levee have felt they suffered more
than their share of illnesses. Troyla Keller has a rash
and asthma that abate every time she leaves the
neighborhood and worsen when she returns. Augustine
Nicholson Dorris had breast cancer and seizures. And
David Sanders has trouble breathing, a tumor on his
thyroid, and neurological problems. “It took a lot away
from me,” said Sanders, whose speech is slurred, when I
visited the area a half-hour west of New Orleans in
February. Several people spoke of shuttling their
children and grandchildren to the nearby ER for asthma
treatments. And many residents also frequent the
neighborhood’s two busy dialysis centers. A third is
under construction.</p>
<p>“Everybody felt there was too much sickness,” said
Robert Taylor, 76, whose wife had breast cancer and is
now struggling with multiple sclerosis. Taylor’s
daughter Raven suffers from gastroparesis, a relatively
rare autoimmune disorder that has left the 48-year-old
unable to digest food and bedridden, after an attempt to
treat the condition surgically led to a staph infection.
But there were plenty of other unusual conditions, too.
Trollious Harris, who has spent most of her life a few
blocks from the Taylors, suffers from myasthenia gravis,
another autoimmune condition, which has caused her
muscles to weaken. Kellie Tabb has a rapid heartbeat and
recently met two other people in the area who have the
same condition.</p>
<p>“Everybody has had someone that has died of cancer,”
said Taylor’s daughter Tish as she stood in the doorway
of the family’s home on East 26th Street. To an outsider
like me, the neighborhood looked festive, with kids
playing on neatly mown lawns and Mardi Gras beads
adorning many of the doors. But when Tish, who is 53 and
has lived on the block since she was 4, looked at the
nearby houses, she saw the people who had fallen ill.
“Mr. Henry died of cancer, and he had two sons who were
diagnosed with it, too. And Miss Sissy, who lives down
the block toward the river, she had pancreatic cancer
and died this month. Ms. Diane died of cancer, too,”
Tish said, ticking off the casualties on her fingers.</p>
<p>“Something is clearly not right with this area,” said
Lydia Gerard, whose husband developed kidney cancer at
age 64 that recently metastasized and spread to his
chest. Gerard herself suffers from sudden bouts of
diarrhea and anemia as well as vitiligo and other
autoimmune problems. Her lips and eyes often swell
inexplicably and she has itchy welts on her arms and
legs that get better when she goes to work 30 miles away
— and come back with a vengeance when she returns home.
While I was interviewing Gerard and her husband in their
two-story home, I also broke out in hives.</p>
<p>Besides being a likely human carcinogen, chloroprene,
the gas the plant has been releasing into this community
for 48 years, is known to weaken immune systems and
cause headaches, heart palpitations, anemia, stomach
problems, impaired kidney function, and rashes. So the
EPA’s news, bad as it was, provided a form of relief.
After all these years, a government agency was helping
to explain the residents’ strange predicament. The
people living next to the plant might be sick, but at
least they weren’t crazy.</p>
<p><span class="dropcap">T</span><u>he air pollution</u>
crisis in St. John the Baptist may be the best
illustration of why we need the EPA — and how the
imminent slashing of the federal agency’s budget will be
measurable in illnesses and deaths. Since 2002, the EPA
has periodically published a report estimating the
expected number of cancers per million people in every
census tract based on airborne emissions from industry.
For most of the country, the expected number of cancers
due to this pollution is somewhere between zero and one.
The national average is .968.</p>
<p>But for the people living in the census tract within
St. John the Baptist that is home to the Taylors,
Kellers, Sanders, and Gerards, the risk is dramatically
higher. According to the EPA’s most recent <a
href="https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/2011-nata-assessment-results">National
Air Toxics Assessment</a>, which was published in
December 2015, the lifetime risk of cancer from air
pollution in this area, which is less than 2 square
miles, is a staggering 777 per million people, by far
the highest in the country and more than 800 times the
national average. Other census tracts near the plant had
risks that were more than 200, 300, and 400 times
higher.</p>
<p>No one I spoke to in this patch of the parish seemed
surprised by the idea that the synthetic rubber plant
just over the chain link fence from their houses might
have a role in the community’s health problems. DuPont
opened the factory on a former sugar plantation called
Belle Point in 1964, and its smokestacks have been
pumping out chloroprene over this mostly
African-American neighborhood since 1969. Many of the
people living here can trace their roots back to
slavery, when their ancestors worked on nearby
plantations, and some of their homes are former slaves’
quarters. And now the giant property next door looms
over their lives in other ways. Most can see the stacks
from their windows. And the residents I spoke with said
that at times, odors wafted from the factory that
smelled “pungent and rotten,” “almost like a singed
plastic” — or, as Mary Hampton put it simply, “like
poison.”</p>
<p>Hampton said she gets sinus attacks when the chemicals
are at their smelliest — and she is not alone. Although
there has been no formal study of health effects in the
area, Wilma Subra, a consultant who has been working
with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network to help
the residents of St. John the Baptist respond to the
news about chloroprene, recently surveyed 150 people who
live near the plant about their symptoms after what she
calls “odor events.” Eighteen reported having sinus
problems, 31 reported burning eyes, 25 reported
headaches, and 14 stomachaches. Others reported
diarrhea, difficulty breathing, and rashes.</p>
<p>Lois Frank, who is 65 and has lived within a few blocks
of the plant since it opened, said that at first, the
intense smells threw many people in the neighborhood
into a panic. “My mother would call the plant and say,
‘You must have a leak,’ and they’d send somebody in the
truck. And then they would always tell us, ‘We don’t
smell anything,’” Frank remembered recently. “After a
while, people got tired so they just stopped calling.
What’s the point in calling if they ain’t going to do
nothing about it?”</p>
<p>Almost 50 years later, the fumes remain, along with the
sense of being powerless to stop them. On a mild evening
a few months ago, when Robert Taylor arrived home from a
trip to New Orleans, the smell was “so bad, you couldn’t
even walk, you had to run inside.” He called 911 to
report it. When a fire official arrived a few minutes
later, his response was validating, if not helpful. “He
got out of his vehicle and he said, ‘Oh my God, do they
really expect you people to live in this? You understand
you got a problem here?’” Taylor recalled. The problem
the fire official was referring to wasn’t the smell,
according to Taylor. “He said, ‘You know this is one of
the biggest taxpayers in the parish!’”</p>
<p>Until recently, Lois Frank thought of the smelly cloud
from her powerful neighbor as just a nuisance. “We knew
we were getting emissions,” said Frank. Her husband, who
died of leukemia at age 52, was one of four people in
her immediate family to get cancer. “We just didn’t know
how bad it was. We didn’t know about the chloroprene.”</p>
<p><span class="dropcap">A</span> <u>little-known
division</u> of the EPA called the Integrated Risk
Information System helped quantify exactly how bad
chloroprene is. IRIS evaluates the toxicity of chemicals
and in 2010 concluded that the colorless chemical that
is the building block of neoprene, one of 28 the plant
releases into the air, was a likely human carcinogen.
The classification was based in part on research showing
that the rats and mice exposed to the stuff developed
cancers of the thyroid gland, lung, kidney, liver,
mammary gland, and fore-stomach. The <a
href="https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/iris/iris_documents/documents/toxreviews/1021tr.pdf">2010
report</a> referred to studies showing that
chloroprene increased the risk of cancers in people,
too. Studies of four different human populations around
the world showed that exposure to the chemical increased
the risk of liver cancer, in one case by more than 700
percent. Other studies IRIS reviewed showed a link to
lung cancer. In one study of Russian shoe factory
workers exposed between 1960 and 1976, chloroprene
increased rates of leukemia and kidney cancer as well as
liver cancer. The study also showed chloroprene elevated
the risk of colon cancer and deaths from a combination
of all cancers.</p>
<p>It took too long for the EPA to get the research on
chloroprene to the people who needed it most. Although
the agency published its air toxics data, which included
a <a
href="https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/2011-nata-map">map</a>
that clearly showed the risk in St. John the Baptist in
December 2015, it wasn’t until the following May that
John Vandenberg, director of the EPA’s National Center
for Environmental Assessment, <a
href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-06/documents/memo-iris-chloroprene052516.pdf">wrote</a>
to the regional office to point out the elevated cancer
risk in the parish, which houses the U.S.’s only
neoprene-manufacturing plant and is the major source of
chloroprene emissions in the country.</p>
<p>Vandenberg’s letter, which identified chloroprene as
“likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” revealed how
slowly the critical information made its way through
government. The National Toxicology Program’s Report on
Carcinogens described chloroprene as “reasonably
anticipated to be a human carcinogen” in 2005, as the
letter noted, and the International Agency for Research
on Cancer had classified chloroprene as “possibly
carcinogenic to humans” in 1999, 17 years before the
letter was sent.</p>
<p>Still, the dangers chloroprene poses to particular
communities would likely not have been quantified at all
if not for IRIS, which has been a frequent target of
industry in the years it has assessed the toxicity of
chemicals. And the knowledge of these health effects
wouldn’t have been combined with data on the release of
hazardous chemicals to calculate the localized risks of
cancer from air pollution if not for another branch of
the federal agency: the EPA’s Air Toxics Assessment
Group. That information made it from the obscure report
to the people of St. John the Baptist Parish thanks to
yet another division of the agency, the regional office,
which met with a local environmental organization, the
Louisiana Environmental Action Network, in June and has
since helped arrange for air monitoring around the
plant.</p>
<p><span class="dropcap">T</span><u>he EPA was</u> created
in 1970 in large part to right the power imbalance
between industry and residents of polluted communities
like St. John the Baptist. Richard Nixon was president
at the time and appointed William Ruckelshaus, or “the
enforcer,” as he came to be called, to lead the agency.
Among Ruckelhaus’s victories was getting companies to
comply with the newly passed law to curtail air
pollution, the Clean Air Act. Ruckelshaus even managed
to get Union Carbide, then a powerful chemical company,
to reduce emissions at its plant in Marietta, Georgia,
after the company initially threatened to fire workers
if it was forced to comply with the EPA’s new pollution
emissions schedule.</p>
<p>Forty-seven years later, our current scandal-ridden
Republican president is handling environmental
enforcement differently. Donald Trump, who threatened to
eliminate the EPA entirely during his campaign, has
instead installed as its administrator former Oklahoma
Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who built his career
trying to undermine the agency. “Polluting Pruitt,” as
some call him, has already begun making cuts that will
eviscerate the EPA’s ability to protect Americans from
dangerous industrial pollution.</p>
<p>The EPA declined to answer questions about specific
cuts, but the new administration is likely to shrink or
eliminate every branch of the agency that helped convey
the risks of chloroprene to the people of St. John the
Baptist. Leaked versions of the agency’s budget show
that the administration plans to zero out funding for
local air pollution monitoring. And cuts are <a
href="https://insideepa.com/daily-news/omb-requires-epa-develop-plan-eliminating-two-regional-offices">expected</a>
to the regional offices.</p>
<p>Trump’s proposed budget also cuts most funding for the
Office of Environmental Justice, which was devoted to
protecting communities like the one in St. John the
Baptist, according to Mustafa Ali, one of the founding
members of that office. I spoke with Ali the morning he
resigned from the agency he served for 25 years, most
recently as the senior adviser for environmental justice
and community revitalization. He told me he chose to
leave because he has “a different set of values and
priorities” from the new administration and that
low-income communities and communities of color contend
with disproportionate environmental pollution because,
“lots of times, people don’t put as much value on their
lives.”</p>
<p>IRIS, the only division of the agency that
independently assesses the toxicity of industrial
chemicals, is almost certain to fall victim to the cuts
as well. The <a
href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/2018_blueprint.pdf">proposed
budget</a> calls for $2.6 billion in cuts to the EPA,
including $233 million from the Office of Research in
Development, which includes IRIS. Republicans on the
House Science Committee had already made it clear at a <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/02/05/republicans-want-to-make-the-epa-great-again-by-gutting-health-regulations/">hearing
in February</a> that elimination of IRIS was one of
their three priorities for the EPA. And the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, the think tank run by Myron Ebell,
who headed Trump’s EPA transition team, identified IRIS
as “<a
href="https://cei.org/blog/congress-should-target-unaccountable-epa-programs">top
on the list</a>” of environmental programs to cut.</p>
<p>“I’m sure it’s a key thing they want to get rid of,
IRIS, because of how influential it is,” one EPA staff
member told me. “If they kill that, they kill the
ability to regulate. The whole world looks at an IRIS
evaluation. It really does draw the line in the sand and
tells people where the risk is. Once that’s defined, you
can go back to the water concentration and the air
concentration and show that you have to do something.
Without IRIS, you might be able to measure something in
the air or water, but you won’t have any proof that it’s
a problem.”</p>
<p>Republicans have also targeted funding for both the <a
href="http://www.politico.eu/article/trump-international-agency-for-research-on-cancer-christopher-wild/">International
Agency for Research on Cancer</a> and the <a
href="https://www.propublica.org/article/as-trump-slashes-epa-worry-over-the-fate-of-an-agency-doing-similar-work">National
Institute for Environmental Health</a>, which
publishes the National Report on Carcinogens, the two
other governmental bodies that recognized the cancer
risk of chloroprene years ago. Together with IRIS, these
two programs provide the only significant counterweight
to industry’s own research. As we’ve <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/14/dow-chemical-wants-farmers-to-keep-using-a-pesticide-linked-to-autism-and-adhd/">seen</a>
many times <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2015/11/03/epa-used-monsanto-funded-research/">before</a>,
that science is often biased by companies’ interest in
maintaining the profitability of their products.</p>
<p><span class="dropcap">D</span><u>uPont’s long history</u>
of keeping troubling scientific research about its
products secret underscores the need for independent
scientists to evaluate chemicals — and make those
findings public. Indeed, while the people of St. John
the Baptist didn’t know which chemical they were
inhaling, let alone the dangers it posed, DuPont was
well aware that chloroprene presented health risks even
before the company started neoprene production at the
plant in St. John the Baptist in 1969.</p>
<p>DuPont introduced neoprene — a flexible substance that
would go on to be used to make everything from gaskets
and hoses to mouse pads, fly-fishing waders, and
wetsuits — in 1931. As it did with <a
href="https://theintercept.com/series/the-teflon-toxin/">PFOA</a>,
a chemical used to make Teflon, the company carefully
studied the effects of chloroprene. As far back as 1938,
DuPont scientists conducted experiments with the
chemical used to make the new synthetic rubber, and by
1941, they expressed concerns about its safety.</p>
<p>That year, John Foulger, who was then head of DuPont’s
in-house toxicology unit, Haskell Laboratory, issued a
report called “Toxicity of Chlorabutadiene,” which is
another name for chloroprene. The <a
href="https://theintercept.com/document/2017/03/23/toxicity-of-chlorabutadiene/">report</a>,
which DuPont submitted to the EPA in 1992, more than 50
years after it was written (and which I accessed through
the EPA’s website), detailed a list of complaints made
by DuPont workers exposed to the chemical that is eerily
similar to the list of problems now plaguing the people
of St. John the Baptist: dizziness, headaches, nausea,
heart palpitations, diarrhea, and rapid pulse.</p>
<p>Foulger, who labeled the report “personal and
confidential” in 1941, also summarized Haskell studies
showing that dogs exposed to chloroprene developed the
same type of problems the neoprene workers had. Foulger
recommended re-examining workers who experienced
abnormal pulse or blood pressure after being exposed to
chloroprene within a few days and if the symptoms
continued, then lowering their exposure “to avoid the
production of definite tissue damage.”</p>
<p>DuPont scientists also exposed guinea pigs to
chloroprene and according to the 1941 report found that
when there was more than 50 parts per million of the
chemical in the air, “there may occur circulatory
abnormality.” Prolonged exposure, Foulger noted, “may
produce serious circulator abnormality, and even lead to
collapse.”</p>
<p>Even back then, the scientists worried about how
ongoing exposure to chloroprene might affect people. “It
has been our general experience with other compounds
producing this same type of circulatory abnormality that
the longer the man is exposed to concentrations of toxic
chemical capable of producing circulator abnormality,
the less rapidly does he recover when removed from
exposure,” Foulger wrote 76 years ago.</p>
<p>Despite the concerns, DuPont began making neoprene in
an industrial neighborhood called Rubbertown in
Louisville, Kentucky, in 1941, and began production at
its St. John the Baptist plant in 1969. Two years later,
Haskell scientists performed another chloroprene
experiment, exposing 10 rats to chloroprene gas. Several
of the animals developed head tremors and
“incoordination of legs” and three of the animals died
after the exposure, according to a 1971 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/document/2017/03/24/1971-haskell-laboratory-report/">document</a> that
DuPont sent to the EPA in 1992.</p>
<p>The company appears to have alerted at least one other
part of the government to the risks. In 1974, John Zapp,
who was then the director of Haskell Labs, sent a letter
to the acting director of the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health, expressing concern over
the potential carcinogenicity of chloroprene. At that
point, there was already ample evidence to suggest the
chemical was a health hazard. “The primary responses to
chloroprene appear to be central nervous system
depression and significant injury to lungs, liver, and
kidneys,” stated a bulletin the CDC published in January
1975. The bulletin referenced the Russian study that
showed elevated rates of lung and skin cancer among
workers exposed to the chemical and noted that animals
exposed to chloroprene had a decreased number of white
blood cells, which play a central role in immune
function.</p>
<p style="display: inline;" class="readability-styled">But
this information never made it to the people in St. John
the Baptist, who by then were already smelling the
emissions from the plant. By 1988, according to internal
DuPont documents obtained by The Intercept, the company
was concerned enough about the dangers of chloroprene to
set its own limit for round-the-clock exposure at 0.5
parts per million (ppm). Exposure above that limit would
“not necessarily result in any adverse affects,”
according to a 1994 </p>
<a
href="https://theintercept.com/document/2017/03/24/dupont-acceptable-exposure-limits-list">document</a>
<p style="display: inline;" class="readability-styled">
marked “for DuPont use only.” In 1988, the company also
set an “acceptable exposure limit” for workers exposed
to the chemical for 12 hours: 10 ppm. By 1999, the
company had lowered that limit to 2 ppm, presumably
based on new discoveries it had made about the health
effects of chloroprene.</p>
<p>By 2002, people living near <a
href="https://www.rubbertownfilm.com/">Rubbertown</a>,
Kentucky, where the DuPont neoprene facility was one of
more than a dozen chemical plants, had begun to complain
about cancer and other health problems. That year,
DuPont scientists embarked on their own study of workers
at the company’s neoprene plants in Louisiana, Kentucky,
and Ireland. While researchers around the world had
found that chloroprene exposure elevated the risks of
various cancers, the DuPont <a
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/17007827/">study</a>,
which was funded by the International Institute of
Synthetic Rubber Producers and published in 2006, found
almost no evidence that it increased the risk of
developing cancer. That year, the company cited the
study in an effort to get scientific groups to <a
href="http://www.rubbernews.com/article/20060807/ISSUE/308079975/dupont-aims-to-get-chloroprene-delisted">reclassify</a>
chloroprene so it was no longer a potential human
carcinogen, according to Rubber & Plastics News.</p>
<p>Under pressure from workers and environmental groups in
Kentucky, DuPont closed its Rubbertown plant in 2008.
The year before, the United Steelworkers, who had called
attention to the health risks of chloroprene, <a
href="https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2007/09/03/9058871/dupont-louisiana-neoprene-unit-may-pose-danger/">wrote</a>
to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to warn that
consolidating neoprene production at the St. John the
Baptist plant would cause “added pollution and a higher
risk of cancer.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, DuPont did consolidate its neoprene
operation at the Louisiana plant, where it made the
chemical until November 2015. Then, six weeks before the
EPA published the <a
href="https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/2011-nata-assessment-results">National
Air Toxics Assessment</a> — which combined emissions
data with the health information in the IRIS report to
calculate that the risk of cancer from air pollution
near the plant was hundreds of times higher than in
other parts of the country — DuPont announced the sale
of the neoprene division of the plant to a Japanese
company called Denka Performance Elastomers. Under new
ownership, the production and emissions continued.</p>
<p>Although DuPont sold the division, it could still
potentially be liable for the 46 years in which it
produced neoprene at the plant. And at least as far back
as 2009, it had enlisted a science-for-hire consulting
company, now known as Ramboll Environ, to represent its
interests on chloroprene. Ramboll Environ, which has
also <a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/low-tar-cigarettes/481116/">represented</a>
Phillip Morris, met with the EPA in <a
href="https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/iris2/events.cfm">August</a>
2016 to challenge the agency’s finding that chloroprene
is a likely carcinogen.</p>
<p>Although the EPA did not change its classification of
the chemical, DuPont continues to maintain that its
plant posed no risk to the community in St. John the
Baptist. In response to a list of questions regarding
the plant and the company’s knowledge of the dangers of
chloroprene, DuPont provided the following statement:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While DuPont operated the Pontchartrain site, we
protected our workers from chloroprene exposure
applying standards that were up to 125 times more
stringent than U.S. Occupational Health and Safety
Administration (OSHA) standards. DuPont also took
great care to protect the health and safety of
community-area residents operating under an air permit
issued by the Louisiana Department of Environmental
Quality (LDEQ), which established chloroprene emission
limits and met the Louisiana Toxic Air Pollutant
Ambient Air Standard for chloroprene<em>.</em> We
believe there was no community risk associated with
chloroprene.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In response to a list of questions about its awareness
of the risks associated with chloroprene, Denka
Performance Elastomers consistently challenged the EPA’s
assessment. “EPA’s 2010 Toxicity Review of Chloroprene
characterizes chloroprene as a likely human
carcinogen. The epidemiological studies do not support
that conclusion, and St. John the Baptist Parish, where
the DPE facility is located, has one of the lower cancer
incidence rates in Louisiana,” a company spokesperson
wrote in a statement, adding: “The epidemiological data
does not demonstrate a credible link between human
exposure to chloroprene and the incidence of cancers in
chloroprene workers, who are exposed to much higher
concentrations of chloroprene than members of the
community.”</p>
<p>Denka also stated that it was not aware of the
forthcoming EPA air toxics assessment until several days
after it acquired the neoprene division of the plant on
November 1, 2015.</p>
<p>Denka emphasized that its operations are in compliance
with its air permits, which is true. When the company
purchased the facility in 2015, it came with a permit
that allows Denka to emit 403,580 pounds of chloroprene
per year, which is more than 100,00 pounds above what it
actually emits. But the permit was first issued in 1994,
well before the EPA recognized the chemical as a likely
human carcinogen.</p>
<p><span class="dropcap">T</span><u>he EPA generally</u>
strives to keep the risk of cancer from air pollution to
less than one for every million people. But a May 2016 <a
href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-06/documents/memo-prelim-risk-based-concentrations050516.pdf">memo</a>
about chloroprene from Kelly Rimer of the agency’s Air
Toxics Assessment Group acknowledged that such a low
rate isn’t always obtainable and offered instead as the
“upper limit of acceptability” a risk of 100 in a
million. To stay below that higher level, chloroprene
emissions would have to be kept to no more than .2
micrograms per cubic meter.</p>
<p>While Denka <a
href="http://www.lobservateur.com/2017/01/11/state-denka-sign-and-share-laplace-chloroprene-emissions-plan/">indicated
it would try</a> to reduce its chloroprene emissions
by 85 percent, the company has not committed to meeting
any particular level.</p>
<p>Though the numbers from IRIS are officially “risk
estimates” and not enforceable limits, the EPA can use
them to create binding rules and regulations. But that
process, which takes years under the best of
circumstances, is very unlikely to move forward while
Trump is in office.</p>
<p>States can also use the IRIS numbers to set their own
rules. But that seems unlikely in Louisiana. Chuck Carr
Brown, the head of Louisiana’s Department of
Environmental Quality, told me that the .2 micrograms
level is “just a guidance.” Instead of aiming to keep
emissions below the recommended level, Brown said he is
working with Denka to improve leak detection and repair
and install various technologies that, he said, should
reduce the level of chloroprene emissions by the end of
2017.</p>
<p>Although the EPA <a
href="https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/iris2/chemicalLanding.cfm?substance_nmbr=1021">document</a>
that set the level indicates that its confidence in its
calculations is “medium/high,” Brown, a former industry
consultant, also said that “nobody is standing behind
that number” and that “there are folks that are
challenging IRIS.” When I asked which folks Brown was
referring to, he didn’t respond. At a December meeting
with residents of St. John the Baptist Parish, Brown
suggested there was no cause for “<a
href="http://www.lobservateur.com/2016/12/14/chloroprene-emissions-concern-man-state-official-addresses-fear-mongering-cancer-questions/">fearmongering</a>.”</p>
<p>Brown pointed to the state’s cancer registry, which he
told me “doesn’t show any elevated levels of cancer at
all in any group of people.” It is true that the <a
href="http://sph.lsuhsc.edu/louisiana-tumor-registry/data-usestatistics/statistics/">Louisiana
Tumor Registry</a> fails to show an elevated rate of
all cancers in the parish as a whole, compared to the
rest of the state, which has the <a
href="http://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/2016-annual-report/measure/CancerDeaths/state/LA">fourth
highest</a> rate of cancer deaths in the country (only
Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia have higher
rates). But it’s impossible to tell from that data
whether there is any increase in liver cancer, which is
the type of cancer most clearly linked to chloroprene.
The tumor registry doesn’t report cancers at all if
there are fewer than 16 cases or deaths, according to
Lauren S. Maniscalco, the registry’s liaison. The
registry withholds data for smaller areas to protect the
confidentiality of patients, Maniscalco said.</p>
<p>Reporting data at the parish or county level, however,
instead of the zip code or census tract, makes it
virtually impossible to see hotspots within the county.
Because liver cancer is rare — there are only 7.6 cases
for every 100,000 people in the U.S. — you would expect
to find about three cancers in the entire parish.
According to county level data from <a
href="https://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/incidencerates/index.php?stateFIPS=22&cancer=035&race=00&sex=0&age=001&type=incd&sortVariableName=rate&sortOrder=default">the
CDC and National Cancer Institute</a>, St. John the
Baptist Parish has three or fewer cases of liver cancer.
But even one case in the small census tract next to the
factory, which has just 1,966 residents, would represent
a rate more than six times what’s expected.</p>
<p>“Parish-level data is not going to tell you anything
about locale-based health problems,” said Barbara Allen,
a sociologist who has <a
href="https://www.amazon.com/Uneasy-Alchemy-Louisianas-Industrial-Environments/dp/0262012030">studied</a> the
Louisiana Tumor Registry, which has been sued by at
least one researcher for its refusal to share data. The
registry was also paid by the Louisiana Chemical
Association to produce a study of links between industry
and cancer in 1989. “By collecting the data and only
releasing it at the parish level, the tumor registry and
other interested parties know that there is no way to
show a correlation between living near industry and
disease,” Allen said.</p>
<p style="display: inline;" class="readability-styled">While
the hard cancer statistics are either inconclusive or
disputed, no one has even attempted to tally the
autoimmune diseases or other problems that have been
reported both in the scientific literature on
chloroprene and in the neighborhood. But thanks to
spherical metal air monitors that have been hanging at
six points near the neoprene factory since May, the
level of the chemical in the air is becoming
increasingly clear.</p>
<p>When we spoke, Brown told me that the improvements at
the plant had already brought about a significant
reduction in emissions. “I won’t take a victory lap too
soon, but the numbers are looking good,” Brown said. But
<a
href="https://www.epa.gov/la/denka-air-monitoring-summary-sheet-2">monitoring
data</a> on the EPA website show that there is still
plenty of chloroprene in the air by the plant.</p>
<p>In November, a monitor by the intersection of Acorn
Street and Highway 44, which runs alongside the river,
was 765 times higher than the level the EPA calculated
would have a 100-in-a-million cancer risk from air
pollution. By the clinic, where many residents go for
treatment, the level was more than 330 times higher. And
on a Saturday in January, the level of the likely
carcinogen in the air by the Fifth Ward Elementary
School was 370 times above what the EPA described as the
upper limit of acceptability. That is more than 37,000
times higher than the level of chloroprene the EPA
calculated would bring the risk of cancer down to one in
a million.</p>
<p><span class="dropcap">W</span><u>hether the pollution</u>
is hundreds or thousands of times what it should be, the
knowledge that children are being exposed to elevated
levels of a likely carcinogen would be enough to spark
widespread outrage and immediate action in many places
around the United States. But not in this part of
Louisiana.</p>
<p>In October, Robert Taylor, along with his neighbors
living near the plant, founded a group called Concerned
Citizens of St. John the Baptist. Taylor, a retired
general contractor and bass player, remembers drinking
from “colored” water fountains and playing in bars where
he had to walk through a separate entrance because
“that’s where we made our living.” After the factory a
few blocks away began making neoprene, he watched
stoically as his nature-loving son mourned the plants
and insects that seemed to retreat from the
neighborhood. Even when the Taylors “lost outdoor air,”
because the odors made it too unpleasant to be outside,
he was resolute. “It was just subtle and gradual,”
Taylor said, “like they were turning up the temperature
a few degrees at a time.”</p>
<p>But the recent news that the chemical his family has
been inhaling for so many years might have contributed
to their illnesses has changed something in Taylor.
“It’s too much,” he told me, while his wife rested on
the couch next to us. In recent weeks, Taylor has been
organizing meetings with Wilma Subra, the technical
consultant who has worked with the Louisiana
Environmental Action Network, discussing how they might
be able to get the chemical out of their air.</p>
<p style="display: inline;" class="readability-styled">But
the local parish council and the school board have yet
to address the issue. And in an area where churches
guide much of public life, few religious leaders have
spoken openly about the pollution problem. Steve
Perrilloux, who leads the congregation at the Riverlands
Christian Center in the parish and grew up two blocks
from the plant, invited 15 pastors to a meeting in
January to discuss supporting the community there, but
since the meeting, only one has stepped forward to help.</p>
<p>“They’re looking at dollars and cents and not
recognizing that they have to stand for righteousness
rather than an economic benefit,” Perrilloux said of the
other pastors. “Sometimes people don’t want to get on
the wrong side of the political leaders.”</p>
<p>Many people fear being seen as a threat to the chemical
industry, which is one of the biggest local employers.
Two hundred and fifty people work at the plant, though
few members of the African-American community living
right next door have managed to get any of the coveted
jobs there. The two I heard of, Bryant Perrilloux and
Nathan Duhe, also happened to die premature deaths from
cancer. Duhe, who was an operator at the plant for more
than two decades, died in his early 60s. And Perrilloux,
a distant cousin of the pastor who began doing
janitorial work at the plant after school when he was
17, died of stomach cancer when he was just 18.</p>
<p>Still, many local residents defend the plant. Pastor
Perrilloux has already heard from people who see him as
attacking a valued source of local income. “One even
raised his voice and he even cursed at me,” he said.</p>
<p>I got a taste of how local authorities treat potential
threats to industry when I took a walk along the
Mississippi River on a Sunday morning while reporting
this story. Setting out on a public walkway not far from
the neoprene plant, I came to a mammoth industrial
facility that runs along both sides of the road parallel
to the river. Minutes after I used my phone to snap a
photo of the tangled pipes that snaked above my head, a
security vehicle and two sheriff’s cars arrived. A
uniformed officer emerged from one and told me he would
report me “to Homeland Security.” After I gave the
officers my name and drove away, one of the cars
followed me and pulled me over with sirens blaring,
accusing me of using the wrong blinker and calling for
backup.</p>
<p>Others who challenge the industry face worse hostility.
In the more than two decades that she’s been providing
technical assistance to residents of polluted areas in
the South, Wilma Subra has had her office broken into
more than 20 times. Someone even shot at the office
once. Subra, who also helped the community living near
the neoprene plant in Rubbertown, now does her work
behind bulletproof glass.</p>
<p><span class="dropcap">T</span><u>he people living</u>
alongside the plant in St. John the Baptist Parish will
be relying on Subra and one other person who is
protected from the vagaries of the local economy as they
move forward. John Cummings, a dapper 80-year-old trial
lawyer who owns 6,000 acres in the parish, recently
brought together a number of attorneys to “address the
situation” near the plant, as he told me when we spoke
amid the live oak trees on the <a
href="http://whitneyplantation.com/">Whitney
Plantation</a>. Cummings, who transformed the old
sugar plantation into the state’s only museum of slavery
and is clearly outraged by the pollution, described
himself as “a bad guy to ignore.”</p>
<p>It’s easy to see how a person who has made and spent
many millions in the area would expect people to listen
to him. Robert Taylor and the others living near the
neoprene plant have no such expectations. They’re used
to being ignored.</p>
<p>For years, their fears about the plant hung over the
neighborhood like the toxic gas. But the residents’
collective sense that they were being harmed wasn’t
enough to get a response. It took the work of several
divisions of the EPA over the course of many years to
prove that people were in danger. And that was under
administrations that at least nominally supported the
agency’s mission.</p>
<p>Under the best of circumstances, the agency designed to
protect public health can give communities like the one
in St. John the Baptist a shot at vanquishing the
pollutants that affect their health. Without it, they
might not even have that.</p>
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