Do EPA Chemicals Protections Protect 'Cancer Alley?'

going to learn a new vocabulary term. It's fence line communities. And that's what we call neighborhoods near the fences of big factories that spew out a lot of pollution. Is the EPA looking out for these communities. We take a look. Hello, and welcome back once again to Parts per Billion, the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz. You know, in real estate they say location, location, location.

If you live near a zoo, you might hear some animals, if you live near the docks, you might melson fish. And if you live near a giant chemical factory, unfortunately, you're going to be exposed to chemicals. That's the situation for a handful of communities in the Gulf Coast that's earned the nickname Cancer Alley. It's called that because it's a heavily industrialized part of the country wood with petroleum refineries and chemical manufacturers, and the folks who live there

have noticeably higher rates of cancer. Now, the EPA regulates chemicals, but before it can do that, it has to look at how risky they are. But risky to who does EPA only look at average people's exposure or the average resident in Cancer Alley. That's what we're going to be talking about today with Pat Rizzuto, a Bloomberg Law reporter who covers chemical regulation. She explained exactly why Cancer Alley earned its nickname. Yeah, I can't say I'd want to

be known as living in Cancer Alley. But it used to be called Louisiana's Petrochemical Corridor. It's an area about eighty five to one hundred miles along the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and there are a lot and awful lot of oil refineries there and chemical plants. Then in the mid eighties, some of the residents began to notice that they had an awful lot of cancers there,

and so hence the moniker. Louisiana has a high cancer rate to begin with, and there are mixed studies on how much higher this rate is in this cancer corridor, but some research from Tulane Law School looked at it and found that the risk these people face is definitely higher that on average. Nationwide, people are exposed to about seven pounds of toxic air pollutants per year, but in

cancer rally, it's sixty pounds per person. That's pretty stark, and I mean that echoes a lot of what you have done in your reporting recently with you know, looking at the amount of chemicals that the people who live there are exposed to. Where specifically are these chemicals coming from. You mentioned chemical plants, petrochemical plants, but let's get a little bit more specific. What types of plants or are these chemicals coming from, What products are they making, what

are those products used for? Well, the chemicals that my article focused on were about fifteen chemicals. They included a fragrance, some flame retardants, solvents, and chemicals that are used to make plastics. So it's chemicals that are make the kinds of things that we use every single day. Right now, let's get to this the really interesting part of the part that I found really fascinating, which is what is

the EPA doing about this? I get the sense that when the EPA looks at, you know, whether a chemical is safe to be used in society, I guess they don't necessarily look at the people who will be exposed to the most amount of the chemical. They look at the average person. Is that right? Well, let's take one step back. In twenty sixteen, Congress did something pretty profound.

It totally overhauled the nation's primary commercial chemicals law. Yeah, and if told EPA for the first time ever in its history, that it must look at the risks posed by chemicals that are made in the US that are used in the US. And it told EPA that it had to consider the risks chemicals posed to susceptible and high exposed populations. But then I guess the question is what did those two words mean? You know who defines that.

So for the first batch of ten chemicals, there wasn't a lot of time for anybody to prepare information to

persuade EPA one way or the other. But EPA is now into its second batch of twenty chemicals, and so when last year it flagged that it was going to be looking at twenty chemicals, a coalition of environmental groups focused primarily in Louisiana but also in Texas, you know, came together and they did this amazing the rich package of data using EBA's own databases to show the agency that they have much much higher exposures than the average

US resident would. For example, one statistic that hit me the folks living in the highly industrialized Gulf region of Louisiana and Texas get more than one half of all releases nationwide for three of the twenty chemicals that EPA is looking at. Amazing, seventy three point six percent of the nation's releases of another chemical that used to make synthetic rubber are in this region. So they really made

their case using EPA's own data. And we should say this is a pretty small area that I saw that in your story too, and that really really stood out to me, just the disproportionate levels here. And of course people with means don't tend to live right near these factories, you know, people with means can afford to live elsewhere, So it tends to be people who are poor who have a hard time accessing public health care to begin with, that are in these regions that are the most highly exposed.

We're going to take a quick break now, but when we come back, we'll talk about whether a future EPA administration will change the way it evaluates chemical risks, or whether it even can stay tuned. We're talking today with Pat Rizzuto, a chemicals reporter with Bloomberg Law. She says, the environmental activists who are asking the EPA to change its chemical risk evaluations took an interesting look at the

agency's own pollution data. And what's interesting about the package that they put together is that any individual plant might be complying with all of its requirements. It could be, you know, needing what EPA and the state have told it it must do. It's just the concentration of all the chemical and petrochemical and oil refineries down there that

is the issue. It's the the volume of exposures and is that something the EPA looks at the cumulative effects of all of these plants that are clustered in one area or not. Well, these groups are certainly saying the agency must And what happened was the first time as it was preparing its plans. The draft plans didn't have any statements about EBA planning to look at any particular group. It would quote the laws requirements that we might look at this, and might look at these, and then these

are examples and workers are an example of people. Pregnant women are an example of people. But it didn't have any specifics for any of the twenty chemicals. So then I looked at the twenty final risk plans. The only major change is that EBA said it might look at the risks fence line communities face that's the buzzword for people who live right along side these industrial plants. But it didn't promise to do that. So still not a big commitment there, and that there's no commitment despite all

the information in the Environmental Justice Coalitions package. It never promised. So what's the next step here? You know, the EPA is going to sort of, I'm assuming, move to the next stage of evaluating these twenty chemicals. Is there a chance they might change their mind or is there let me rephrase that, is there an opportunity for the EPA to change its mind or is it locked in here? Even if next year we have a new administration, A

new EPA administrator with some different priorities. Is this locked in. Well, EPI left the door open. It said it might look at so you know, it left the door open, And so basically all will be determined by EPA no matter who the administrator is. This EPA could decide there's enough information to look at fence line communities, This EPA could

do that, or if the administration changes. In that case, I think it's highly likely that that administration would simply because there was such a strong push from the Democrats during the rewrite of the chemicals law to push for highly exposed and susceptible people to be to have their risks looked at. That's really interesting. So this is yet another area of environmental policy where the outcome of this

November's election could have a really big impact. Yes, Actually, I think there are quite a few issues that are playing out in courts, and depending on how they're resolved, the EPA could have a do over on a lot of its risk assessment works. So far. Now, that doesn't depend on the administration. That just depends on the court. Sure, oh you know, it's got the potential for a do over depending on how the court's rule and then it's got a potential for a do over if a new

administration comes in. That's it for today's episode of Parts Parvillion. If you want more environmental news, check out our website newstot Bloomberg Environment dot com. That website once again is news dot Bloomberg Environment dot com. And by the way, if you're interested in this big election thing we have coming up in a few weeks, definitely check out our sister podcast, Down Ballot Counts. It's looking at the races for Congress and state legislators this year. It comes out

every Monday. Definitely strong recommend there. Today's episode of Parts Rebellion was produced by myself and Josh Block. Special assistance came today from Anna Yugenonov. Parts Rebellion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. The music of today's episode is a Message by Jazar and Dragon Tattoo by Tom Hillock and Nicholas Boskovic. They were used under a Creative

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