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 siblings have friends who died prematurely or are sick. They have respiratory problems, leukemia, asthma…”
Butler, who also had breast cancer, lives in St. James County, Louisiana, a place known in the United States as the “Cancer Corridor.”
In this 160 km between Baton Rouge and the tourist city of New Orleans, there are more than 150 petrochemical installations and refineries.
The odor of gasoline permeates the air and the toxic substances they give off are classified as potentially carcinogens by the US Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The risk of contracting cancer among its inhabitants, mostly black, is 50 times higher than the national average, according to the EPA.
In counties like Saint John the Baptiste, the risk of getting cancer is 200 to 400 people per million and is associated with emissions of ethylene oxide and chloroprene, two powerful toxins.
The numbers contrast with the rest of the state of Louisiana, which is between 6 and 50 per million.
US President Joe Biden said shortly after arriving at the White House that he wants to address “the disproportionate impact on health, the environment and the economy in communities of color, especially in hard-hit areas like the Louisiana Cancer Corridor.”
“The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has the primary responsibility for implementing the Clean Air Act programs, including monitoring emissions and air quality, and enforcing regulations,” said an EPA spokesperson.
The state’s environmental quality department, for its part, argues that “the air quality in Louisiana is very good.”
“We comply with regulations. We meet all of the EPA’s criteria for pollutants,” Gregory Langley, a spokesman for the Louisiana department responsible for environmental health, told BBC Mundo.
Eve Butler, however, has a different experience than Louisiana officials say.
“Not only does it smell different. On a few occasions I went out without an umbrella. It started to rain and my hair and face got wet. Days later my skin started to fall out. sun,” Butler told BBC World.
From your window, when you get up every morning, what you see are six storage tanks used by the petrochemical company installed in front of your house.
“The grass is discolored, the trees aren’t as green as they used to be, and sometimes black things grow on some of the plants that were until recently 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 Hall as a form of “environmental racism.”
“The petrochemical corridor along the Mississippi River has not only polluted the surrounding water and air, it has also subjected its residents, mostly African Americans, to cancer, respiratory illness and other adverse health effects,” they said.
“This form of environmental racism poses serious and disproportionate threats to the many human rights of its residents,” they said.
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 neighborhoods 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 did not spread throughout her body, she had to undergo surgery and lost her left breast.
“I have a daughter and two grandchildren. I told my daughter that she would have to move elsewhere because the county is not a safe place. The only close relatives to me now are my mother and one of my eight brothers,” he adds. .
Something similar happens with Marylee Orr, also a local resident and environmental activist against pollution.
“A lot of villagers would leave if they had money, they would abandon everything. They would go to another part of Louisiana or wherever they wanted. At the moment, they can’t even have a birthday party for their kids in the yard because it smells so bad, making them cough and causing breathing difficulties,” 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 in June of last year.
Both agree that there is strong evidence for a link between air pollution and cancer rates.
“In Louisiana specifically, there are more pounds 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 benzene, which normally comes from burning gasoline in oil refineries. The second is formaldehyde, another very common industrial toxicant,” says Terrell.
“And finally we have 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 these three are the most common. But the list is much longer and some communities are dealing with even more unusual contaminants,” he adds.
The Louisiana Department of the Environment told BBC World that it “does not agree with the methodology or the 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 has skyrocketed to more than 300 facilities in the last century.
The reasons that led this type of industry to establish itself in this area are a mixture of geographical and social circumstances, but also political ones.
For starters, explains Craig E. Colten, professor emeritus in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, the state is home to abundant oil deposits that have been mined since the early 1900s, as well as other natural resources such as salt and gas.
The second attraction of the area is that the Mississippi River is a waterway that allows the passage of boats and the transport of goods and waste from areas as far from the sea as Baton Rouge, which is about 2,32,000 miles from the mouth of the River.
Another factor is the tax breaks for establishing this type of business in Louisiana. A state that, despite having one of the most industrialized areas, is one of the poorest in the United States.
While the country has 10.5% of people living in poverty, Louisiana reaches 19%, according to the census.
The average family income in the United States is almost US$63,000 (about R$353,000), while in the State it is only US$49,500 (R$278,000).
The low cost of labor, a state government that supports the arrival of new companies with tax incentives, as well as lax environmental policies and laws are, for Professor Colten, factors that have allowed the world’s greatest power to also be a of the most polluted places on Earth.
“Since 1997, massive toxic releases have been allowed into the corridor region, dumping more than 65.5 million pounds of chemicals into the environment and forever changing the landscape of industry in southeast Louisiana,” said Professor Colten.
Marcos Orellana, United Nations Special Rapporteur and a lawyer specializing in international law, human rights and the environment, says that what is happening in the Cancer Corridor is not accidental.
“What exists is a concerted and systematic policy by the Louisiana State authorities to favor the location of highly polluting industries in places where the Afro-descendant population lives,” he said in a conversation with BBC Mundo.
“If we look, for example, at the Sunshine project by the company Formosa, which aims to open a large factory for the production of plastics, the use of land in the municipality was changed to allow for the project where Afro-descendant communities lived”, he says.
“While the county authorities themselves have banned the location of other petrochemical plants where whites live.”
“So there is no coincidence here, but open discrimination based on race,” he says.
“The facilities literally surrounded the Afro-descendant communities that live there, with incessant toxic contamination,” he adds.
BBC Mundo contacted the Louisiana governor’s office to question them about the UN rapporteur’s accusations, but as of the time this report was published, there has been no response.
To plastics factory
Despite complaints, EPA data and scientific studies, the petrochemical industry continues to grow in the area.
Orellana, UN rapporteur, mentioned above a mega-plan known as The Sunshine Project to build a US$9.4 billion (about R$54 billion) petrochemical complex on just over 9 square kilometers.
Everything belongs to the same company, Taiwanese petrochemical Formosa, one of the world leaders in the manufacture of plastics.
For years, company executives have been trying to obtain permits to make the project’s 14 facilities a reality along the Mississippi River.
The plan includes the construction of chemical plants, wharves for ships and barges, collection lines, railway connection, power generation plants and effluent 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 Louisiana’s industrial corridor, which includes St. James County, where The Sunshine Project is located, are higher due to industrial activity,” she argued based on Registry data. of Louisiana Tumors, State University School of Public Health.
Local media reported that Louisiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards supports the bill as an economic engine for his state.
But neighborhood associations and activists in the county, which Eve Butler belongs to, have been fighting the company for years, and in recent months, several reports suggest the battle may be in their favor.
The US Army Corps of Engineers ordered an environmental review of the Formosa project in Louisiana, temporarily halting the company’s plans.
This is a small victory for women like Eve Butler and Marylee Orr.
“Over the years, I’ve lost a lot of people,” Orr told BBC Mundo.
“Friends, neighbors, co-workers.”
“They will say that cancer rates in Louisiana are higher because people are fat, eat badly or smoke. But the truth is, my community suffers from asthma, rashes and nosebleeds for no apparent reason.”
“When we started with the association where I work, another mother and I co-directed it. Her name was Ramona Stevens. When the cancer was detected, it was all over her body and she died at 39, leaving behind two children,” Orr recalls.
“And it kept happening. It went on all the time.”
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