Riya Jariwala Cancer, a universal experience and the defining disease of our generation, is ever present in communities living along the 85-mile stretch of petrochemical facilities near the Mississippi River. On average, there’s only about 500 feet between a plant, an oil-well, and a house in this region. This is an environment with no buffer from harmful substances, and families suffer the loss of loved ones due to cancer too often. The air pollution induces a multitude of issues, including headaches, vomiting white foam, dizziness, asthma, cancer, respiratory issues, and even miscarriages, infertility, and still births in women. Residents step out of the house and feel their faces tingle and burn, which definitely isn’t an indicator of a healthy environment. Residents in these communities are reminded everyday of the bureaucratic holdups, and exceptions and exemptions made to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Large oil companies are hijacking democracy, as seen by the Louisiana state government siding with money-making monopolies instead of advocating for their citizens’ health. Even the data of cancer rates for Louisiana has been corrupted, and through research you could not find out the cancer rate for a specific area code in Louisiana. The Louisiana Tumor Board will not publish numbers for parishes with populations that number less than 16,000 residents. These communities make up the majority of parishes affected by environmental injustices due to their close proximity to oil refineries and chemical plants. Despite the obvious severity of health issues in Mississippi and Louisiana communities, supporters of the fossil fuel industry argue that residents in the area depend on the jobs and income that this industry provides. But communities next door to carcinogen-emitting plants are literally sick of hearing these arguments - money is no respect enough to buy their health or bring back dead loved ones. And oftentimes these citizens cannot just move away, since many aren’t able to buy a new house when theirs is already paid off. This environmental injustice in Mississippi and Louisiana is grounded in times of slavery, when slaves in southern states worked on sugar plantations and in cotton factories. As petrochemical plants replaced those industries and slavery was outlawed, Black Americans still did not have representation when fossil fuel companies essentially invaded Louisiana to set up factories and plants. Corporations bought out entire towns, like in Reveilltown, where there’s a historic black cemetery within the grounds of a chemical plant. Even today, our system allows the creation of more of what Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University, calls “sacrifice zones” - places with poverty, extreme health issues, and heavy pollution. And toxic industries have purposefully established themselves around colored communities, which has especially degraded the equality of Native and African Americans in this country. Racist public policy like redlining, which is technically illegal but still has echoing effects today, can even explicitly mark neighborhoods of minorities and people of color as less desirable, which drives the establishment of highways and factories closer to the homes of these people. This is all summarized concisely by Bullard when he said in a Vox interview, “The history of this country is tied to race and place,” and “You tell me your zip code, I can tell you how healthy you are.” These tribulations are just part of the whole story; the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed ugly truths of racial discrimination that strongly relate to environmental issues and health disparities in our country. Despite historical and structural inequalities, the biggest factor in the disproportionate rate of Covid-19 cases for Black Americans lurks in the poisonous air in areas like Cancer Alley. A preprint study published during the pandemic found a strong correlation between air pollution and severity in Covid-19 cases, which isn’t surprising given the similar heart and respiratory complications caused by both air pollution and Covid-19. Analyzing over 3,000 US counties and controlling for certain factors, the study also found that counties with higher air pollution exposure also had higher rates of deadly Covid-19 cases. Although this is only a preliminary study, the findings present a very likely reason for why Black Americans face a higher risk for coronavirus infection than other races. We can see further support of this from Covid-19 and demographic statistics: as of May 2020, Louisiana had a 32% African American population, which made up about 56% of the whole state’s Covid-19 cases. Clearly this population is at great risk for developing severe health complications compared to others due to uncontrollable and unjust reasons.
This pandemic has been telling about our country’s history of racial segregation and systemic racism which intersect with public health, resulting in vulnerable communities ravaged by the fossil fuel industry and public health crises. People are already taking steps to fight systemic racism, especially given the events of 2020, however we have work left to do on the environmental activism front to fight for a healthier, more inclusive, and equal national landscape.
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