Plastic Podcast Episode 26: Cancer Alley and Environmental Gaslighting

Today we dive into the case study of Cancer Alley. We investigate the environmental and health impacts of a region in Louisiana notorious for its high concentration of petrochemical plants. The discussion focuses on how pollution from these industries contributes to disproportionately high cancer rates, particularly in marginalized communities. Special guests Dr. Kimberly Terrell and Gianna St. Julien from Tulane Environmental Law Clinic share insights from their groundbreaking studies that link air pollution to increased cancer risks and explore the concept of environmental racism. The episode also highlights grassroots activism efforts aimed at addressing these injustices and the ongoing fight for meaningful policy change in the region.

Episode Guests:  Dr. Kimberly Terrell and Gianna St. Julien

More on the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic

Find the Toxic Air Pollution Report here

Find the Racial Demographic Report here

More on the Louisiana Bucket Brigade 

More on Rise St. James

More on Concerned Citizens of St. John

More information about the episode and the Plastic Podcast

Episode Transcript and more information on the Pine Forest Media Website.

Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia

Hosted, produced, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong. 

Theme music by Tadeo Cabellos 

Transcript:

[00:00:10.420] - Clark

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Plastic Podcast, the show that tells the science and the story of our relationship with plastic. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and today we are covering Cancer Alley, the Health Consequences of the Petrochemical Industry and Grassroads Activism. All right, so Cancer Alley is the topic of the day. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you may have heard it mentioned a couple of times anecdotally. It's a pretty substantial case study when it comes to plastic and public health and fossil fuels and environmental justice, so we are going to dig into it today. Cancer Alley refers to a stretch of land along the Mississippi River, and it stretches from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and the surrounding areas. This region is home to over 350 petrochemical plants and refineries, many of which produce plastic and plastic-related products. One of my friends from university did her thesis on Cancer Alley. She was interested in plastic, and her project was to look at all of the corporations that operate in the corridor and see which of them, how many of them, or what percentage of them can be linked to plastics in one way or another.

[00:01:26.330] - Clark

As we know, the plastics production chain is quite long, and she found that every single one of them could be linked to plastic in one way or another. So among other things, this is a plastic's issue. She was actually on another Pine Forest Media podcast talking about her work, and I will put a link in the show notes if you're curious about it as well. But why is it called Cancer Alley? Well, that term was coined in the 1980s, although it's important to note that the industry presence in the region started as early as the 1930s. So this has been going on for almost 100 years. In any case, the cancer rates in this area are exceedingly high on account of exposure to toxic chemicals and air pollution from these factories. The smog in the area is thick, it's dark, it's visible. So why has nothing been done about it? Well, one of the reasons is that industry and policymakers have been demanding direct proof of causation education, and they've been placing the burden of procuring that proof onto the affected communities, which providing evidence for something like that, whether or not we think it should be necessary, requires a lot of resources.

[00:02:27.120] - Clark

We have to ask ourselves, how do you go about proving like that. Well, our guests today are going to tell us because they did it. But for years, companies have been safeguarded by what they assert is plausible deniability. As we mentioned, there are hundreds of factories, and so it's not the easiest thing to pinpoint which of them are directly responsible. It gets even harder if we're looking for direct evidence for specific chemicals, because as we learned on the show, there are thousands of them associated with plastics. But whether or not that evidence should be necessary for regulation is a separate discussion, and we're going to have it today. But that is what has been demanded by those who have the power to act before they're willing to do it. They've been pretty stubborn about it. Despite the ferocious activism by various grassroots groups in the region, there are many, but Rye St. James, Concerned Citizens of St. John, and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade have all been working on this issue for a very long time. I'll put some information about them in the show notes for further reading, but among their demands are calls to close facilities, to prevent the construction of new ones, and to relocate affected children, and more.

[00:03:27.690] - Clark

There have been some isolated success stories, but we are still waiting for meaningful change. The lack of evidence that we just mentioned has really been a brick wall. Another brick wall is racism. Environmental racism specifically refers to the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards, pollution, or ecological degradation, experienced by racially marginalized communities. Now, the fence-line communities with exposure to these chemicals and experiencing these health burdens are predominantly made up of Black communities and other racially marginalized groups. We also have to mention that the region has a long history of racial oppression. That same friend of mine from Uni, who did her research, found out that before it was called Cancer Alley, it used to be known as Plantation Alley. Obviously, we haven't had plastic or oil refineries for that long, but the systems of oppression that support what's happening there have been alive in this exact area for hundreds of years. That is just a fact that has to foreground any discussion that we have about this. With all of that said, today, we are going to be speaking with two guests who work at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. Dr Kimberly Terrell and her colleague, Giannia St.

[00:04:29.160] - Clark

Julien, have recently published two health studies designed to provide these grassroots organization with the evidence that they are told that they need. The first study drew a link between exposure and health outcomes, and the second proves that a greater health burden is faced by communities of color. We are going to talk about the research, how they did it and what they found, and what they hope it might mean for activism in this space. Without further ado, let's hear from them now. All right, so we are recording. Welcome, both of you, to the show. Maybe I can start by having you both introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about the work and the research that you do.

[00:05:14.610] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Sure. My name is Kim Terrell, and I'm the Director of the Community Engagement Program and a Staff Scientist at Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. My job here is to help communities by providing them with scientific and technical information that supports their environmental advocacy goals.

[00:05:33.630] - Gianna St. Julien

My name is Gianna St. Julien. I'm also a staff researcher/community engagement specialist at Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. My job is centered around assisting clients and other community members with resources that they need for a lot of their work, health data, pollution data, and also just keeping track of a lot of the industrial permitting that's happening in Louisiana, making sure that the people who are affected are aware and able to participate in the environmental decision-making process.

[00:06:07.750] - Clark

Thank you so much for being here. I did record a little introduction at the top of the show, trying to, as best I could, introduce the topic. But is there anything you would like to say if we were asking the question, What is Cancer Alley for someone who's never heard of it?

[00:06:21.860] - Gianna St. Julien

Yeah, sure. I think what we like to describe it as is… Cancer Alley is about 184 river-mile stretch, roughly between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana, where many communities are overburdened with toxic air pollution from over 350 industrial facilities. In these areas, these are predominantly people of color and high poverty areas that are very rich in history and have their own deep sense of home that is being gradually disrupted and destroyed by the growing presence of industry.

[00:07:00.430] - Dr. Kim Terrell

I would just add that I often see a statistic reported that it's a 85-mile stretch. That's if you draw a street line on a map from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. That's not how rivers work. I think a lot of what's in the media actually underestimates the extent of what Cancer Alley is. I've also seen the figures of how many facilities. I've seen, Oh, 100 facilities, 200 facilities. But I think we've been repeating numbers from maybe a decade or two ago. I think what many people might not realize is that even though Cancer Alley has been around a long time, the industrial development has gotten more and more dense and more and more extreme

[00:07:50.210] - Clark

I'm curious. Can you tell me how this topic was introduced to the Tulane Law Clinic or how either of you as individual researchers decided to take on this Yeah.

[00:08:00.540] - Dr. Kim Terrell

I'll start with the clinic question, and then, Jan, I'll pass it to you for the individual question. The clinic was founded in 1989 with the help of an environmental organization called Lean, Louisiana Environmental Action Network. And a funder had reached out to them and said, Hey, what would be the most helpful thing for your fight for environmental health and environmental justice? And they said, We need legal help. We need a law clinic. So the issue of industrial pollution and environmental justice was really tied into our founding. We don't have our own mission. Our mission is to support the goals of community members. But because we live in a very heavily industrialized state, the most common request for help that we get is related to industrial pollution.

[00:08:52.730] - Gianna St. Julien

Yeah. Just adding on to what Kim said. Like she said, we don't have our own mission as the clinic. All of our research and interests are guided by what's brought to us by community members or clients. As she said, a lot of it is surrounding industrial pollution, particularly in Cancer Alley. We've heard a lot about family members and neighbors and friends of a lot of the people who live in these communities being overburdened with cancer. Our job from there is to take a step back and look at the data and see if that data can explain anything that we're hearing from from the communities themselves. I guess personally, being introduced to the topic of Cancer Alley and this work. I'm from New Orleans, born and raised. I'm currently in Atlanta, but I went to school in Lafayette, Louisiana, which I studied environmental science there. A lot of what I noticed in the curriculum was more focused on working for industry and writing permits and handling things like that. But my interests were always more focused on the environment and the people themselves. Once I decided to look for career options, coming across the clinic and seeing that they had a history of helping a lot of predominantly Black communities and being a Black woman myself, I definitely think that sparked an interest for me and being someone from Louisiana, just trying to get involved in something that I think is really important and actually matters.

[00:10:23.840] - Clark

I'm interested by, I guess, the reality that grassroots organizations are coming to a law clinic and saying, We need evidence. I came across a quote from you, Dr. Tarroll, stating that data gaps and research gaps benefit polluters and are weaponized against communities. Can you speak to that quote and how that reality has been, I guess, preventing any meaningful action by the government to correct this issue?

[00:10:49.240] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Yeah, absolutely. So one perspective that I heard a lot when I first came to this job was, Oh, there's no evidence. There's no evidence to support the community community's concerns. Well, if there's no research, there's going to be no evidence, right? And in public health, there's something called the precautionary principle, which is the idea that the burden of proof should be on the polluter to show that something is safe, right? Or more generally, if we have reason to think that something might be harmful or unhealthy, we're going to assume that it is until we have evidence otherwise. People might remember several A couple of years ago, there were a lot of concerns about the Zika virus and how it might affect unborn children. And so pregnant women were advised not to travel to places where they were at high risk for contracting the virus, even though the science hadn't been done yet, right? Because there was enough there to think, Hey, this might be a problem, and let's err on the side of protecting people's health. But it was a totally different approach to Cancer Alley. You had people who, for decades, had accumulated this observational evidence, which we also call first-hand experience.

[00:12:06.450] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Then you had decision-makers and industry saying, Oh, well, there's no science to support it. We had also seen a couple studies that... I guess the nicest way I could put it is that they were not scientifically robust, but studies that had been done that did not do a good job of accurately measuring or quantifying what people are exposed to. So for example, there was a study funded by Shell, a petrochemical company, that looked at cancer mortality across a vast area in Southeast Louisiana, and they just assumed that everybody in that area was equally exposed, and so they looked at cancer mortality relative to the state average. That's not how you do science. If you want to understand the potential link between pollution a health outcome, you need to measure pollution exposure, and you need to measure the health outcome, and you need to account for other things that might introduce noise into that relationship. Once I got an understanding of the narrative and how science was being misconstrued or misused against communities, it seemed like the obvious thing to do was to actually look at the cancer data, look at the pollution data, and objectively see what the science tells us.

[00:13:32.560] - Clark

Okay, so I'm hearing that in this case, the precautionary principle was not enough on its own to bring about the reality that we need to protect people. The reasons for that are numerous and could prompt a bunch of different discussions. But in any case, it was not enough. Therefore, your organization went out to establish this link to service as proof. Was this study able to establish a link? I guess the question I'm asking is, what were the results of your study?

[00:13:56.950] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Yeah. We found pretty compelling evidence that in Louisiana, among communities that are predominantly Black or high poverty, those communities that also have higher levels of toxic air pollution have abnormally high cancer rates. Like above and beyond what you would expect based on poverty and other risk factors. That is the strongest link that that type of study can establish. There's different ways to look at the question. You can survey individual people and obtain medical records. In other types of public health research, you can do controlled exposures. If you want to understand whether a drug is effective at preventing a disease, the gold standard is a randomized controlled trial. You can't do something like that with pollution exposure. People are not lab rats. You can't intentionally expose people to talk toxic air pollution. We have to pursue the research that is available. One of the ways that we can do that is we can look at public data sets and look at the neighborhood level and say, Hey, for neighborhoods that have higher levels of air pollution, are the cancer rates in those neighborhoods higher? And yes, they absolutely are. And we absolutely found evidence that toxic air pollution contributes to Louisiana's high burden of cancer.

[00:15:29.750] - Clark

Okay. Okay, just to quickly check my understanding, did this study involve any new data collection, or was it drawing connections between existing data sets?

[00:15:39.100] - Dr. Kim Terrell

It was existing data sets, which is the crazy thing, right? So this issue has gotten so much media attention and is supposedly controversial, and there's data out there that isn't being crunched that's publicly available. And granted, okay, the caveat is that before 2018, The Louisiana Tumor Registry was only releasing cancer data at the Parish level, which is equivalent to the county level. And that doesn't tell you a whole lot, right? It's a pretty big area. Air quality differs. And so, coincidentally, Actually, the year that I joined the clinic, the Tumor Registry, which is our state cancer registry, started releasing their data at the census tract level, which is more like a neighborhood level. That gives you a more precise sense of how health outcomes vary across Louisiana, and you can link that to differences in pollution burden.

[00:16:40.840] - Clark

Okay. I imagine a study like this will involve a certain amount of resources which are not always easy to obtain. But if the data sets already existed, was this study the first of its kind in this specific geographic region? And if so, why? If the data sets were already there, why did it take so long for a study like this to be conducted?

[00:17:00.370] - Gianna St. Julien

Well, one, yes, this was the first study of its kind to look at the entire state and like Kim said, to actually measure pollution. There were a few studies that were published in peer-review literature that looked at pollution in cancer, but they didn't exactly capture the full picture. Like him said, technically, there was the issue of the data, the census tract level cancer data not being available until 2018. You could argue that that was a reason for it taking so long for the study like this to be done. But as far as the other data that was available, we're not totally sure. I think that's something that a lot of the community members are always a bit frustrated with is that They obviously don't have the bandwidth to dive into the research and do it themselves. But there are a lot of state agencies that do have the bandwidth and do have the resources that they could do something like this themselves, and it hadn't been done before. So as to why, I don't want to assume, but I think it does speak a lot to where we stand in Louisiana as far as what we take seriously as far as the primary priorities as far as taking care of the people in the communities and addressing their concerns.

[00:18:21.840] - Gianna St. Julien

Unfortunately, I think that isn't something that's super high of a priority for a lot of people until more recently, I guess.

[00:18:30.500] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Well, and I'll add, Giana makes a really good point that, yeah, the Louisiana Department of Health, the Louisiana Tumor Registry had access to the cancer data set all along. They could have done this study 10 years ago, 20 years ago. When I say it wasn't available until 2018, what I mean is that the data set wasn't made public. But anyone within those agencies, any academic researcher could have gone through the channels to get that protected data set. It's frustrating that that wasn't done. I will also add, I don't hesitate to be critical of my own institution. When Gianna and I published this study, we gave a talk at the Tulane School. Well, We gave a talk at Tulane that was attended by several people from the Tulane School of Public Health. And one person stuck around after the talk and wanted to address our findings. And he was very adamant that there was no evidence. Even though I had just spent an hour presenting the evidence, he said, Oh, well, there was a study done in the '90s that showed that there wasn't an association. I said, First of all, the study he was telling me about was an occupational study, totally different from looking at neighborhood level cancer rates.

[00:19:54.870] - Dr. Kim Terrell

It was apples and oranges. The study he was referencing wasn't peer-reviewed and published. It really struck me that here you have a public health researcher who is not thinking like a scientist, who is not willing to consider new evidence, who is not willing to consider the limitations of previous research, and has just stuck on a conclusion to the detriment of the community.

[00:20:23.280] - Clark

Well, I'm not sure who that person was or what his intentions were or what study he was referencing, but referencing other vague studies is a look over their approach. It makes you skeptical of that study that was done by Shell that you mentioned. Shell funded it, and Shell loves profit margins. What was it that they were actually trying to do with that study? Were they trying to find results that would mean that they would have to stop making as much money? Also, considering the fact, I don't want to minimize the work that you've done. I'm sure there were lots of challenges involved, but what I'm hearing is that it sounds like it was relatively straightforward as far as research goes.

[00:20:57.390] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Oh, yeah. As far as public health research, it was an easy study. I mean, it was minimal cost, no new data collection. I think I did most of it sitting in my kitchen during COVID.

[00:21:12.320] - Clark

Okay. Well, I hope in that case, at least, that this method can be used by other researchers around the country and the world to give, I guess, communities the data that they need to protect themselves. In any case, we have this study, which was scientific, robust, peer-reviewed, published, et cetera, and it demonstrates a clear link between air pollution exposure in the region and elevated cancer rates. That we have. That's one study. There's another one that you did as well that I'd like to talk about, which was trying to see whether or not these health outcomes were distributed evenly across racial demographics. Can you tell me about that one, too?

[00:21:45.370] - Gianna St. Julien

Yeah, expanding on the cancer study and also trying to take into account other concerns that we'd heard from clients. We wanted to also address certain claims that we had heard by LDEQ, which is the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. They had stated that there were numerous factors other than demographics that influence the development of industry in certain areas, such as land prices or access to the Mississippi River and pipelines and things like that. So all these types of industrial infrastructure, basically saying that it had nothing to do with any racial aspect of the communities they were choosing to permit these facilities in. So when we approach the study, we wanted to get a better understanding understanding of the relationship between that industrial infrastructure relative to the location of the industrial facilities and the amount of emissions coming from those facilities relative to the local demographics in those areas.

[00:22:45.160] - Clark

Okay. Then just to ask, again, did this study involve creating new data, or was it also drawing on existing data sets?

[00:22:51.750] - Gianna St. Julien

Once again, all publicly available and data that already existed. It was basically just looking at a bunch of different census data for demographics, looking at industrial pollution data that was self-reported by industry, looking at the different locations of these types of industrial infrastructure. But all of it publicly available, could have been done by anyone. But Kim and I, like I said, just hearing a lot of the pushback that we got from the cancer study, just decided to go ahead and see what other available data there was that we could hopefully to support some of the claims that we had already been hearing.

[00:23:33.650] - Clark

What were the results of this study? What did you find?

[00:23:36.390] - Gianna St. Julien

Among all of the census tracks in Louisiana that had at least one facility that was required to report to LDEQ, the industrial emissions in those areas, depending on which pollutant you were talking about, were anywhere from 7 to 21 times higher in those predominantly Black communities compared to the predominantly White communities in those areas, and that the location of that industrial infrastructure did not explain the disparity in emissions. There was also evidence that the emission disparity that we saw was primarily driven by the petrochemical manufacturing sectors. We mainly looked at criteria of pollutants, which are your most common industrial pollutants. We wanted to go ahead and also get at the point of what industry subsectors were contributing the most to this disparity that we see in the amount of emissions in these communities. Like I said, petrochemical was the main subsector of industry that was contributing the most to these emissions that we saw, and especially emissions that were particularly high in those Black communities.

[00:24:43.480] - Clark

Okay, so we have two very robust studies with very clear outcomes now, and you were able to provide these communities that came to you with the evidence that they were searching for. I'm wondering, have they been able to take it and run with it in any way? Do we know if having this data in their hands has able to make any headway in this space?

[00:25:03.900] - Gianna St. Julien

Yeah, I mean, they've definitely been able to use that data and reference it. We have seen a lot of the community meetings and things that they were already having having pamphlets now that they could hand out and give to people. Because that was a big issue is, obviously, they had their firsthand experiences of what they were noticing. But having access to that data and really letting a lot of people who maybe didn't even think things were that bad. Have that data that they could reference and just spread among the community members and educate themselves along with the new people that they were also trying to bring an awareness to, I think is always something good to have. Unfortunately, I can't say that there has been a lot of change in a lot of the environmental justice issues that are happening in Louisiana. I know, Kim, you look like you wanted to chime in for a second if you have anything to add.

[00:25:58.030] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Thanks. I think it's a really hard thing to quantify. How do you change public opinion? How do you change policy? I feel like even when you're successful, it can happen in these subtle ways that are not easy to measure. For example, when Jan and I presented our cancer study at Tulane, it was a hybrid presentation, and so it was open to a really broad audience. The administrator of EPA region 6 attended. And afterwards, she asked a question and wanted to know what it would take to do a study like this in Texas. So that told me she got it, she understood the significance of this research. Whether that changed her approach to her responsibilities as EPA administrator for a region, I don't know. I'll probably never know. But certainly, I haven't heard the talking point that there is no evidence to support the community's concerns. Every now and then, you come across people who are just doubled down on their viewpoint and never going to change. But I think the vast majority of people in Louisiana understand that we live in a polluted state and understand that there's cancer associated with that.

[00:27:20.350] - Gianna St. Julien

I think it's important that we acknowledge that while the few studies that we've done and a few other studies that are more recent are looking into these issues in Louisiana, specifically, there are tons of national studies available that already show that exposure to certain industrial pollutants have these health effects. This isn't something that is completely new. It may be new to Louisiana, But we like to say we don't need to study in every neighborhood to show that cigarettes cause cancer. Likewise, we don't need to study in every neighborhood to show that toxic air pollution causes cancer. There's no faith level of exposure to a carcinogen. And I think it's important that Even though there may not be as much Louisiana-specific data or studies available, this type of information already exists on a national scale, and it should be okay to use that data and make it applicable to Louisiana if we know that we're seeing the same pollutants, the same type of industry, and the same types of exposure.

[00:28:21.950] - Clark

Sure. I think that also maybe gets back to the precautionary principle a little bit. We did an episode on the known and unknown health impacts of and the researchers I was speaking to told me that there were like 30,000 different chemicals, and it's not realistic really to do a study for each one before we start to take action. But I know that there's a lot of really hardworking people that are really and really mobilized organizations in this space, which anyone listening, can find some information about in the show notes. We mentioned them briefly in some of their specific demands in the introduction. But I guess in a general sense, what do you hope that this research contributes to in terms of any outcomes in this space of activism?

[00:29:02.580] - Gianna St. Julien

I think, to keep it broad, like we said, the clinic obviously doesn't have our own objectives, but I think just my personal thoughts, I think having this type of data accessible, not only to community members, but just your average person. Hopefully, that encourages more people to get involved in the environmental decision-making process, and hopefully, just allowing enough pressure and scientific evidence to hopefully Hopefully, have LDEQ acknowledge that there is a pollution disparity that we're seeing in Louisiana, and hopefully, start to use their resources to address that.

[00:29:40.440] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Yeah, those are great points that I would add. Honing in and going more specific, one of the cases we're working on right now involves a proposed plastics facility in St. James Parish by a company that's based in Taiwan called Formosa Plastics. When When LDEQ, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, decided to grant the permit for that facility, they referenced cancer data. This was before our study was published, not long before, but just before our study was published and they said, Oh, well, the cancer rate in the neighborhood where Firmosa wants to build this plant is not statistically different than the state average. For anyone who doesn't know, no health outcome at the Louisiana state average should be a gold standard. We are 49th or 50th for just about every health outcome among US states. And what happened since that permit was granted the cancer rate in that neighborhood has increased every single year since that permit was granted. And it started out as numerically higher than the state average, but it didn't reach the threshold of statistical significance. What I mean in plain language is that, yeah, it was higher, but the difference wasn't big enough for it to be statistically certain.

[00:31:12.790] - Dr. Kim Terrell

I think what our study helps emphasize is that you have to look at the big picture and you have to look at the overall relationship between pollution and cancer. To get back to Gianna's point earlier about smoking, I could do a study of my colleagues to see who smokes in this building and who has lung cancer. I'm probably not going to find any association because I haven't considered age, I haven't considered a lot of other factors, and it's a very small population. So anytime you want to find no relationship, it's easy to design a study that will find no relationship. Because the way science is set up is that the default is no relationship, and you have to get enough evidence to convincingly demonstrate that there is a relationship. It really, again, goes back to the precautionary principle and recognizing that looking at any health outcome for a very small community, you may never be able to make a link between that health outcome and pollution because rates might need to be five times higher or 10 times higher before it reaches that threshold of significance. So now there's a study that every community in Louisiana can point to to say, Hey, the reason why our state ranks almost last or dead last in these health outcomes is partly attributable to pollution exposure.

[00:32:50.820] - Clark

Yeah. I think that also gets to the crux of why this study or these studies were, quote, unquote, necessary, which is the tendency to negate or disregard or invalidate lived experience and demand these robust peer-reviewed publications that are sometimes not even possible, as you mentioned. Even if you do manage to get the time and the resources, they don't meet the threshold of statistical significance. I don't know if this term exists, but it's almost some form of environmental gaslighting that we can see. Environmental justice gaslighting, I don't know. We can workshop the term, but it's a trend, and it doesn't just exist in the issue of plastics or with air pollution. We see it with environmental justice across the I'm wondering if you have any reflections or comments on this reality that lived experience is not enough to prompt action in the realm of environmental justice.

[00:33:39.850] - Gianna St. Julien

Yeah, I think you nailed it with that term, the gaslighting. I think that always gets back to what Kim said, the burden of proof being on the community members and expecting them to have the time and resources and bandwidth to do these in-depth studies. Even after the studies are available, who even says that people are actually going to listen to it? Because that's what we're experiencing right now. It is a bit frustrating that those firsthand experiences couldn't be enough to influence the state agencies that do have the resources and have had access to the data all this time. They are the Environmental Quality Agency, or they all are the Department of Health. You think that they're the ones who should be doing this research if their job is to protect the public and protect the environment. But we're not seeing that.

[00:34:35.140] - Clark

Well, as we round out the last couple of questions, I know this might be a really challenging one to answer because there's so many different ways that we could approach this topic, and I'll put some links in the show notes for further reading and ways for people to get involved. But is there anything that we didn't mention yet today that you think we'd be remiss not to when we're having a discussion about research in Cancer Alley?

[00:34:56.240] - Dr. Kim Terrell

I think something that's really important for folks to understand is that the fence-line communities that have borne the harms of industrial pollution and petrochemical pollution, and specifically, plastics production, those are the same communities that are being targeted for, quote, sustainable projects or alternative energy projects. For example, we're seeing a lot of blue hydrogen facilities being proposed in fence-line communities in Louisiana. Even setting aside the whole question about carbon capture and is it effective, there are emissions of toxic air pollutants that are a part of these facilities and these processes. And so even if something is potentially beneficial for a climate goal, is it just making air quality for that fence line community worse and worse and worse and worse? Because it's not a transition if you're getting that blue ammonia facility on top of the petrochemical facility that is still next to you. So it might be a nationwide transition, but at the local level, we're just adding to the burden of these communities. And we shouldn't assume that a community wants any type of pollution, whether it comes from an oil refinery or an ammonia plant or massive dust from a green terminal. I think it's important that communities have the ability to influence their destiny and what's built or not built or what economic development happens in their area.

[00:36:41.440] - Clark

Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that because I think that's something that I don't even spend enough time thinking about because we're all so terrified of climate change. We're all so desperate for solutions to these environmental problems that we have that there might be the tendency to just want to green light any action. But a just transition, I think, is the phrase that's A just transition needs to be always a topic of conversation with anything we're trying to do to be more sustainable. Giada, maybe I'll give you that same question. Is there anything else that you think we should add?

[00:37:11.050] - Gianna St. Julien

Yeah, I think just something that I think we also hear a lot just when these discussions of industry and potential benefits of it, in addition to the greenwashing, as they call it, that's happening. We also see a lot of times industry as a explanation or a potential benefit that they like to point to is that they are going to bring jobs to the communities that they're putting these plants in. And Kim and I have actually done some research to it, and it's still in the peer review process. But what we're seeing is that first-hand experiences, once again, community members have told us time and time again that they are not the ones that are actually receiving the jobs themselves. They often say that they don't want to hire them, whether they're qualified or live close to the plant or anything. And I think it's important to acknowledge that even these potential economic benefits that are being referenced aren't actually true. These are not things that are benefiting the communities in any way. If anything, there's a double harm because now they're experiencing the pollution, and they're also not seeing any of the economic benefits from getting these jobs or having ways to support their families.

[00:38:20.740] - Clark

Thank you for mentioning that. This next question, I do like to ask every guest because the topic of plastic is not always the most uplifting one. It It might seem out of place given the topic of conversation that we just had, but I think, in fact, a lot of our episodes can be a bit overwhelming or even devastating. But I don't want the despair or the overwhelm to win because we do have a lot of work to do. This is to say, I think Optimism is something that we need to seek out actively to propel us forward. In that effort, is there one piece of good news that you can share with us in your field of work before we close out the episode?

[00:38:55.320] - Gianna St. Julien

Kim, would you like to touch on any of our recent cases or outcomes from that?

[00:39:01.740] - Dr. Kim Terrell

Yeah. We had a big success two weeks ago when a company announced that it was canceling plans for an industrial facility in St. John the Baptist Parish It was a grain terminal that was proposed in the town of Wallace. And listeners might be like, Oh, grain is fine. What's the problem with grain? And the answer is it's all about scale and proximity to people's homes. So this facility would have been so close to this community that it would have literally casted a shadow over the neighborhood. It would have had structures that were 200 feet tall, emitting about 90 tons per year of dust. We think that was a massive underestimate. Very close to the the only museum in Louisiana dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved people. In a very historically significant area, in a historic African-American community. And the community had been fighting this project for more than three years. So it was a long, drawn-out struggle. The community leaders were concerned for their safety. A tree in front of their home had been set on fire. They had received hateful messages. They had found flyers outside of their home posted, calling them traders, and just making accusations that as a white woman, I don't even want to repeat.

[00:40:35.130] - Dr. Kim Terrell

And so it was, I think, a really stressful, intense fight for them. But in the end, they were victorious. And we found out just two weeks ago, and there's an ABC news story on it, and there's a picture of me hugging one of the community leaders, and you can just see the emotion on her face. And it's really inspiring. It is a heavy story, but it has happy ending. And it was very much a David versus Goliath fight. This was a very well-resourced company that had no qualms about taking whatever strategy was going to benefit them. The company even paid residents to show up to a meeting to make it look like they had a lot of public support when they didn't. In the end, community members who this was their first experience with environmental justice. It was a steep learning curve, but they did it, and they were successful.

[00:41:36.330] - Clark

That is absolutely great news, not only for this community, but there's a precedent now. I think that the work that the two of you are doing and the work of your clinic is just going to bring about more stories like this. So very happy to hear about that. Congratulations. I think this is a perfect example of how optimism or good news can help propel us forward. Well, I guess the last question is, where can listeners find both of you and follow your work?

[00:42:00.290] - Gianna St. Julien

Our clinic website. So if you just do a quick Google search of Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, you'll see a lot of resources that we have there for not only our studies, but just ways that your average person can get involved in a lot of the environmental decision making that happens in Louisiana, and just little resources for people who don't even reside in Louisiana as far as ways that they can get more involved in their own environmental decision making and having access to the data that could even show an issue in their own community studies that they weren't aware of. I think definitely checking our website, and we'll be sure to keep you in the loop also, hopefully whenever our next studies get published.

[00:42:40.680] - Clark

All right. Well, this is the part where I say thank you both so much for taking the time to come on the show today. Thank you for teaching the audience a bit more about Cancer Alley and for sharing your work with us, and most importantly, for the career that you've dedicated to activism and research in this space. Thank you so much for your time. All right, I have a couple of final things to say. I forgot to ask this in the interview, but something that I came across in looking at the work of these researchers is that cancer is not the only negative health outcome that is associated with industrial air pollution, nor is it the only one that people in this particular community are suffering from. This is to say that the burden that was established in this study, if anything, understated the health burden of the community, either because it doesn't account for other diseases or other diseases resulted in mortality before cancer could even develop. I think this is just one more argument in favor of the precautionary principle. Another thing that we talk about on the show a lot is the idea of compounding issues.

[00:43:45.590] - Clark

Cancer, aside from being a really horrific experience to go through for the person who's suffering, but also for the family members, we're not only talking about the lives that are being lost, we're talking about the economic burden that this place is on an entire community. I also think we have to reckon with the fact that the United States is comfortable committing this atrocity on its own citizens. I think that's not new information. This particular issue has been going on for almost 100 years. I think it's really important that we don't shy away from saying that in the effort of accountability. I bring this up because in just a couple of weeks, we are coming on to what is meant to be the final round of negotiations for a UN Treaty on Plastics, where the United States has a lot of bargaining power. One of the main outstanding debates in negotiation process is whether or not and how the pre-production stages of the plastic life cycle is going to be regulated. Now, we have an episode on this in two weeks where we're going to learn all about the treaty. One of the things that we're going to learn is how once it's passed, for better or for worse, a lot of the enforceability mechanisms actually rely on national publics holding their respective governments accountable.

[00:44:51.610] - Clark

So speaking of holding governments accountable, I mentioned at the top of the show a couple of grassroots organizations working to do just that. I'll say again that you can find further information about them in the episode description. I think I will end it here today. So thank you to all of you who listened. Thank you one last time to our amazing guests and the work that they have done on this topic. And stay tuned, everyone, for the episode on the UN Treaty in just a couple of weeks. You've been listening to Plastic Podcast. You can find more about this week's guests and links to their work in the episode description. Cover art for the show is done by Laura Wong, and the music you're listening to was done by Tadeo Kbezios. I am your host, Clark Markezi, and this episode was produced and engineered by me. If you found it important, please share with someone you know. Plastic Podcast is part of a larger network of sciencey podcasts called Pineforest Media. You can find more information about us in the episode description as well. We are also on social media at Pineforest Media, and we've got some exciting sciencey podcast coming out this year.

[00:46:00.090] - Clark

A five-star rating across platforms and a review on Apple podcast is one of the best things you can do to help the entire network to grow and to help environmental journalism like this reach more people. All right, that is all I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll chat soon.