Cancer Alley, Louisiana US

From September 2022 to January 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed 70 people, including 37 Cancer Alley residents, and traveled throughout the region to document the human rights impacts of fossil fuel and petrochemical operations on residents. Cancer Alley residents described the impact on their health, including miscarriages, high-risk pregnancies, infertility, the poor health of newborns, respiratory ailments, and cancer. Many shared stories of entire communities devastated by cancer, the deaths of family and friends, missed days of work and school due to illness, and children rushed to emergency rooms suffering from asthma attacks.

The report includes new research revealing the toll of air pollution on maternal, reproductive, and newborn health in Cancer Alley, done by researchers at Tulane University in New Orleans in a paper currently under peer review for publication in the “Environmental Research: Health” journal. The researchers found exceptionally elevated rates of low birthweight and preterm birth, as much as triple the US average. Those parts of Louisiana with the highest rates of adverse birth outcomes correspond to those with the worst air pollution, including areas within Cancer Alley. 

For decades, Louisiana’s regulatory authorities, particularly the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, have failed to address the severity of harm from fossil fuel and petrochemical operations, enforce minimum standards set by the federal government, and protect the health of residents. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not ensured that federal laws and mandates are enforced in Louisiana, and as such, is failing to protect residents from harm caused by the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry.

Also on January 25, Amnesty International released a report titled “The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry’s Toxic Pollution in the USA.” The reports by two of the world’s largest human rights organizations expose the devastating human rights toll of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry on frontline communities in the US and say that state and federal authorities should take immediate actions to address this harm.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality should increase regulations and enforcement, deny permits in already overburdened communities, and support local calls for moratoria on new or expanded fossil fuel and petrochemical operations.

The EPA should order fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities posing an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment to immediately pause all operations. The agency should also object to permits in already overburdened communities, support moratoria on new or expanded fossil fuel and petrochemical projects, and implement a remediation and relocation plan.

In December 2023, for the first time in global climate conferences under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the outcome agreement of the UN Climate Conference, COP28, called on governments to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” 

Immediate implementation of this commitment in Cancer Alley would have profound benefits for the health of residents of the area.

Human Rights Watch reviewed data from 12 fossil fuel and petrochemical plants operating in the Cancer Alley area from October 2020 to November 2023. Out of these 12 facilities, only one of them was “reported in compliance with all three federal laws” in the 3-year observational period. Only 2 of these facilities “complied with the Clean Water Act” as well. 

According to the EPA, air monitoring performed near Denka's plant has shown that chloroprene levels are as high as 14 times the recommended level of 0.2 μg/m3, which poses "an imminent and substantial endangerment" to nearby communities.

One of the largest environmental impacts happened when Hurricane Ida hit. The storm's projected path was through the industrial region. 

The threat of the hurricane's destruction caused the industries located in Cancer Alley to release unprocessed chemicals and gases into the air via "flaring."

Even though flaring causes chemicals to be released into the air, the process is legal in emergencies and burns the chemicals directly into the air. 

After the hurricane, residents were not only left with damaged homes but also more pollution in the air and water than usual.

Hurricane Laura caused a fire at a plant that produced pool chemicals, which led to chlorine gas being burned for three days.

The EPA, in both 2016 and 2020, reported that those residing in Cancer Alley are exposed to more than 10 times “the level of health risk from hazardous air pollutants” than other residents in the state.

According to EPA data, the number of industrial plants in Louisiana that reported their toxic releases grew from 255 to 320 from 1988 to 2017, an increase of 25%, even as the number of such plants nationwide dropped by 16% over that period. 

Hurricane Harvey in 2017 caused power outages that led to unrefrigerated chemicals in a plant in Houston decomposing and igniting into a large fireball.

The area immediately adjacent to the Denka/DuPont neoprene plant in St. John the Baptist Parish has been recognized by the EPA as having a likelihood of its residents getting cancer from air pollution over 700 times the national average. 

According to the EPA, it emits 99% of the nation's chloroprene pollution.
EPA opened civil rights investigations over this pollution from Cancer Alley.

Hurricane Katrina caused almost 11 million gallons of oil to spill into the water near New Orleans.

By 1988, locals began referring to an area in Chalmette as "Cancer Alley". 

The "alley" later grew to encompass an eighty-five-mile stretch along the Mississippi River stretching from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and includes the parishes of East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Iberville, Ascension, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Charles, Jefferson, Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines.

By the early 1980s, residents in the neighborhood of Good Hope had grown accustomed to regular fires at a local oil refinery and developed informal evacuation plans for their occurrences.

Despite the known problems with pollution, the petrochemical industry in the area continued unabated and even continued expanding. 

Beginning in the 1980s, locals also perceived certain species of plants and animals becoming less common.

In 1976, Coast Guard divers retrieving sediment samples from a bayou suffered second-degree burns on their hands.

By the 1970s, the area had a proliferation of plants producing vinyl chloride, nitrogen fertilizers, and chlorine. 

An EPA report found 66 pollutants in New Orleans drinking water, and 31 lethal chemicals in the air of Plaquemine.

DuPont opened a plant to manufacture the chemical chloroprene, the main ingredient in neoprene, in Reserve, Louisiana on the border with LaPlace, Louisiana.

Following an oil and gas boom around the time of World War II, several refineries spawned along the Mississippi River near the Gulf Coast. 

Many of these facilities were previously located in major population centers, such as Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but during the 1950s, many sought to migrate to less densely populated places.