The only fate of Louisiana is that it's a problem with its own inevitable solution; it will be inundated and become relatively unlivable. I have to wonder how much that plays into the decisions made by the people who understand that it's not really a long-term project as a state. This is still a hell of a way to treat people living there, but truly, no one should live there.
Sure, but that's a slow leach. For the cumulative poisons which are stable (such as heavy metals) it won't make much of a difference but inundation will increase the concentrations tremendously in a very short time.
Not an expert by any means, but aren't we looking at +2 meters sea level rise by 2100? Maybe less than 1 meter by 2050? Try it out!
IMHO, it would be better not to wait for global warming to take care of this for us. Coastal erosion due factors other than climate in Louisiana is a different (probably more urgent) problem which actually can be solved without world government. Just better government in Louisiana, which...well, OK, yeah, it's probably not going to happen. :)
A little background about myself: I was born and raised in New Orleans to a middle class family that valued education (both parents 1600 SAT and English majors, MD, and MA). I went to one of the best private schools in the New Orleans area, coincidentally built on top of a former dump. All of my family still lives in New Orleans. I live in San Francisco now and haven't lived in New Orleans since my high school graduation.
I return to visit New Orleans about three to four times per year. On every visit, someone will half-jokingly ask me, "So when are you going to leave crazy California and move back?" I simply reply, "When are you going to flee Louisiana?" I have a convenient excuse in that I work in tech, and my family members convince themselves that's the only reason I don't move back. I tell them that I'm never moving back, but they stubbornly hold on to hope. My family isn't the stereotypical American-without-a-passport untraveled, uncultured types. My sisters have lived in Paris, London, Oregon, Maine, Maryland, DC, Texas, Georgia etc. My mom lived in Barcelona for stretches and speaks three languages. Yet they all end up back in the New Orleans area. Family bonds are that strong. Maybe I'm cold and too calculating for not living there with them.
After every good visit with the kids, nephews, aunts and uncles, my wife prods me, "Hey maybe we should live closer to your family." I just reply "No." The answer is simple: Louisiana, and New Orleans especially, is doomed as an ongoing entity. Call it fatalism, call it blindness, or call it stupidity, whatever the reason -- the people of Louisiana just keep on doing the same thing with the same reaction every time something bad happens; "Oh that's such a shame."
New Orleans' nickname is the "big easy"; I call it "the tiny difficult". Nothing ever changes. Progress is slow and glacial. Everyone knows everyone and has their nose in everyone else's business. You live a good life in Old Metairie with a nice weekend home in rural Louisiana. You find out that the wilderness near your home has recently been purchased. The land hasn't ever been touched, so you do some digging into it. You find out that they're going to clearcut the forest and wetlands and build an "oil services facility" on it with "mixed use commercial and residential" on the other side. This worries you because of the loss of wetlands and buffer zone (the forest would soak up flood waters in storms), and you're worried about pollution from the increased land use. You object to the project formally because you're well off and have some free time. Only later, you find out that your opponents are your very rich neighbors in Old Metairie -- doctors and lawyers speculating on land with their friends in the oil business. They start saying bad things and calling you names like a tree hugger and eco-mentalist. Others say that you're blocking progress and aren't thinking of the community and jobs. Eventually, the crooked tentacles of corruption will make their way through the bureaucracies and you will lose. Your neighbors will make more money, "progress" will happen, and you'll now deal with floods annually on a property that never flooded in hundreds of years.
The craziest thing about this tale isn't that it's true. It's that the very people profiting from this and pulling the levers are in the state. They're not always far-off corporations. They're your neighbors: pillars of local industry and commerce who are lauded for their success. It's insane to me that these people are looting and ravaging the very land that they live, and that they will continue to live on. It's one thing to be a wild tycoon, burn the locals and flee. But they're knowingly (or blindingly) hurting themselves, their families, and future generations. Maybe it's the constant layer of corruption in the state at every ...
Thank you for writing this. I can't help but notice that your story works on a much larger scale as well, unfortunately there is no 'California' to run to on that scale.
I stayed after Katrina because I was all romantic on helping New Orleans recover. I have been so much happier since I left a few years ago. I love my friends in New Orleans, but I'm never moving back.
Billy Nungesser by far being the worst example of this at a state level (I say this as someone who turned down a tech job in SF to go to grad school at Tulane)
Perhaps, but it's gone on for generations. Are you old enough to remember the "Vote for the Crook! It's important!" bumper stickers?
For those not familiar with the background, it's a reference to the gubernatorial race between Edwin Edwards (convicted felon and known outright thief) and David Duke (former? Ku Klux Klan grand wizard). Yes. Those were our two choices to lead the state: a criminal and a segregationist.
How do you end up in this predicament? It's not overnight, and it's not one person or group. While the bumper stickers were trying to make a joke out of a bad situation, I found them emblematic of the sad situation and became disgusted with it all. So I did the only thing in my realm of control, and I left.
This was a great analysis. I grew up in Louisiana as well and you capture my sentiments exactly. It is a shame because New Orleans is a wonderfully historical city, with beautiful architecture and a very walkable downtown. It could be a great city - at the very least the epicenter of the region. But I don't think it ever will be...no one with the ability to change it cares enough.
I've often wondered who are the people who have the ability and power to change the city? Is it a matter of the right people not caring, or is it beyond saving at this point?
Or maybe we should really treat it as The City That Care Forgot? Order another round, swing that doo-rag around the second line, and forget about the reality staring us in the face. Crank up the tunes man. Hey, at least WWOZ streams over the Internet now.
The "leadership" of the city abdicated sometime after the Morrison days. New Orleans used to have the port and manufacturing, and truly competed to be the first city of the South. Now tourism provides jobs for chambermaids and busboys, but no middle class. Private and parochial schools have trained nothing but lawyers and doctors since the 60s, and the public system is just starved. Kids have no local STEM opportunities outside the oil and gas industry. I wish NOLA could revive in my lifetime, but it won't.
> I've often wondered who are the people who have the ability and power to change the city? Is it a matter of the right people not caring, or is it beyond saving at this point?
Those who have the ability and power to change the city are its citizens. Always stand up for what you believe in and contribute wherever you can. Engage with or become a civil servant. Vote. Democratic progress is slow but inevitable if we stay focused.
Perhaps the city in its current form is beyond saving. At the very least it may serve as a giant remediation laboratory should technology to reverse humanity's assault on nature and all its inhabitants be developed. Ironically, the solution will likely come from nature.
Very well said. Replace San Francisco with Austin, and you've described me/my life as well.
My mom is always sending me articles (she literally mails me newspaper clippings) about new tech jobs and a burgeoning startup scene in New Orleans... but I just cannot shake the feeling that it's all on borrowed time.
It obviously worked for our parents, but I cannot imagine investing my time and energy into a life and future there.
Good observation. The VW emissions cheating was a technical violation that didn't have much of a real-world impact, because the percentage of diesel cars sold in the USA is tiny.
It often seems that there's something of an inverse proportion in the public outrage over some event vs. the actual damage caused.
VW cheats on emissions for cars that are a tiny of a percent of total cars sold in the USA --- huge fines, mass outrage, because why not? There's really no downside.
New Orleans is chemically polluted for decades, cancer hot zone, etc --- shut up, business as usual, because we need the jobs.
I skimmed it and noticed this: Pentachlorophenol contains dioxins, which are used in making chemical weapons, like Agent Orange
Agent Orange is not a chemical weapon, it is a defoliant. Dioxin contamination was a result of improper manufacture, not a deliberate ingredient. Read the wikipedia page, FFS.
I hate it when this happens. Do I now have to question the rest of the article?
Just because some Wikipedia editor writes something doesn't make it a fact. There are other relevant quotes in there from the governments of the U.K. And US saying that it's not a chemical weapon.
It depends on the meaning of the word. Agent Orange is both a chemical and a weapon, so yes, it's a "chemical weapon", but its primary purpose is killing trees, not people, and its health effects were largely an unintended consequence of a manufacturing side product, dioxin. Most people understand "chemical weapon" to mean weapons intended to kill people, like mustard gas, sarin, VX, ec.
And yes, the original article definitely plays pretty fast and loose with scientific terminology to amp up the scare factor. A cup of coffee contains "likely carcinogens", mutagens and teratogens, the issue is the quantity and the likely effect.
That is not the article on Agent Orange, but rather a C-quality-rated article you've cherrypicked with significantly more political bent. This is the wikipedia article on Agent Orange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange:
Agent Orange is an herbicide and defoliant chemical.
Furthermore, this question was actually litigated and decided "not a chemical weapon" in the US. Again, from the wikipedia article on Agent Orange (emphasis mine):
"Three judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Weinstein's ruling to dismiss the case. They ruled that, though the herbicides contained a dioxin (a known poison), they were not intended to be used as a poison on humans. Therefore, they were not considered a chemical weapon and thus not a violation of international law. A further review of the case by the whole panel of judges of the Court of Appeals also confirmed this decision. The lawyers for the Vietnamese filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. On March 2, 2009, the Supreme Court denied certiorari and refused to reconsider the ruling of the Court of Appeals."
No matter how you feel about Agent Orange the original article's statement about dioxin is just factually wrong.
I wouldn't go that far but the ethics of Monsanto mimic those of cigarette companies when they claimed tobacco smoking was healthy and recruited doctors to promote smoking.
This is a good read for those concerned about pollution, and it's very important to remember that climate change is not the only environmental threat around. Chemical pollution is a bad situation. I was disappointed with a lack of a practical call to action: it's mostly a TED-style exhortation for the "government to do something", along with "chemical plants are bad". There are surely environmental laws, programs, and other regulatory procedures that could help this pollution. Was DuPont breaking the law? Should they have been? How about getting some quotes from the EPA or environmental lawyers? Ranting about "Jazzfest sponsored by Shell" isn't going to inform a citizen or government official about what steps to take next.
Additionally, the second paragraph of the article contains a misleading statement about the risk of cancer in Reserve -- "800 times the national average". The data [1] is still shocking and generally backs up the article: there is a lot of chloroprene being dumped in the air in John the Baptist Parish, and the cancer risk there is the highest in the nation. But the 800x metric is only a summation of specifically enumerated, mostly chemical "point sources". If you sort by total cancer risk (most notably including emissions from cars and trucks), some of the tracts in the parish are only 2-4x the cancer risk of tracts in Manhattan and San Francisco.
The particular situation with the neoprene plant couldn't possibly be OK, but the article is short on details. But I do think the risks of living in the general vicinity (yet outside the explosion range) of industrial facilities is oversold. For example, the east side of Houston towards the ship channel and its hundreds of refineries, terminals, plants, and other facilities shows a higher cancer risk than the rest of the metro area, but it's still less than many parts of LA, Seattle, NYC and San Francisco, due to other factors. The EPA doesn't recommend making these kind of comparisons for several reasons [1]. Also this dataset only covers air (not water / food / lifestyle) risks.
You would be surprised that area is like what I imagine California is like people are laid back and friendly and never forget a good turn or complement and have the coolest accent it's a shame
These are poor communities. I know you realize how much lawyers cost.
Could a firm step in in hopes of getting a big pay day going up against the huge titans of the Chemical industry? Probably. Just hasn't happened yet, I'd say.
A family member of mine used to take medical malpractice cases from these communities while I was growing up. She was routinely harassed and hassled by whatever (exclusively white) sheriff of whatever town was the brother-in-law of the doctor she was suing. Just driving around in these places trying to drum up support for such a suit would be a risk. They have a way of arresting you for imagined vehicular infractions right after the judges go home for the weekend, then letting you out Monday morning as soon as you're arraigned, where you can pay the bill to let out your impounded car.
If that sort of pressure can be applied to people working cases that affect just one doctor in a community like this, I sure wouldn't want to to see what kind of pressure the chemical companies could bring to bear.
> The risk of cancer in Reserve, a community founded by freed slaves, is 800 times the national average
I stopped reading there because I could think of no interpretation of that statement where the claim was even remotely plausible. The overall risk of developing some kind of cancer at some point in your life in the U.S. is about 40% [1]. Life expectancy is just shy of 80 years, so the annual risk of cancer is 0.5%. For the risk in Reserve to be 800 times that, the entire population would have to come down with cancer every three months. If that happened, it would be a bigger story.
Yes, I know that. That analysis was a bit of a straw man. Like I said, the real problem is that I couldn't think of any interpretation under which that claim was plausible. Maybe that's simply due to a lack of imagination on my part, but the way to argue that is to present a plausible interpretation, not to simply proclaim that "that's not how probability works."
Sorry, but I still don't see it. One of your links is to an EPA web site where the number "826" does not appear, and the other is to a local Fox News affiliate (not the most reliable source for environmental reporting IMHO) talking about "total cancer risk", whatever the hell that might mean.
Even if we take this 826 number at face value (and I don't see that number anywhere on the EPA page) then for that to be 800 times higher than the national average, then the national average would have to be 1 in a million -- over what time period? Annually? Life time? This whole discussion is a hopeless mess. But again, I can't think of any interpretation under which one in a million is a reasonable measure of anything. There are only 300 million people in the U.S. One in a million means there are 300 people who are affected. Three times that many people are diagnosed with cancer every day in the U.S.
I stopped after Donald Trump was brought up in about the fourth paragraph. Like him or not, he has nothing to do with the state of Louisana or New Orleans specifically. New Orleans has been governed by Democrats exclusively while all of this environmental damage happened.
"One can only imagine the zilch level of concern for a compound like chloroprene by President Trump, who had at his side when he signed an executive order in February stipulating the roll-back of government regulations the chief executive of Dow Chemical—“Andrew, I would like to thank you for…the fantastic job you’ve done,” Trump told Dow chief Andrew Liveris, then handed him his signing pen to keep as a souvenir."
The way the article brings up Trump is like this: "While it is fashionable to critique President Trump for his scientific ignorance, science was misdirected long before Trump laid hands on it."
> the entire population would have to come down with cancer every three months
The 40% risk of getting cancer doesn't mean 40% of the population will get cancer. Environmental factors increase the risk. I'm not quite sure how you're arriving at that conclusion.
> The 40% risk of getting cancer doesn't mean 40% of the population will get cancer.
Actually, that's exactly what it means. 42% will develop cancer at some point in their lives, and 22% will die of it. Follow the link I provided to see the details.
Chloroprene is the monomer of neoprene, meaning that when neoprene breaks down it creates chloroprene? Interested what evidence we have about the dangers of neoprene for humans/the environment
We need to make chemicals somewhere. Where do we put the chemical plants then? Maybe somewhere where nobody lives where the prevailing winds blow over the ocean? The only place I can think of like that is southern Argentina, but nobody lives there so how do you get all the plant engineers and workers into the plant everyday? It's a tough problem.
The way they're making it now doesn't account for all the costs, so your question is moot. The current manufacturing process ignores the costs that are externalized to the Government and the individuals exposed to the chemicals.
Thank you for reminding us about externalities. Currently they aren't priced in the market. So if you want to do something about it you either have to price them in with the govt (not likely to happen) or you have to invent something better.
If we're purely focused on economics, without any moral judegements or other human values inserted, then the answer is the typical answer for negative externalities. The companies that are exerting economic losses on others via pollution and loss of use of land and loss of health, etc. must pay for those losses in order for a free market to properly price the economic benefit of producing those chemicals. When local politicians say that they're not going to do that in order to attract these businesses, they are explicitly optimizing for worse economic outcomes.
Of course, taking a purely economic view is fairly cold and uncaring. The other issues should also be at play. But I don't think they offer anything more generous to these companies
So given that we have to make chemicals somewhere, how do we minimize the externalities? Locate the plant somewhere where nobody lives, and downwind from the plant are hundreds of miles of ocean where nobody lives, etc. This is probably where they would be naturally located if plant owners had to pay for externalities.
Does money really solve all problems though? This is what is a bit naive about economics. Would people living downwind from the plant be ok with getting XX million dollars if they had to die early from cancer and miss out on 40 years of their lives? Why not move the plant somewhere where it's not getting anybody sick instead of trying to solve all problems with giving victims money. Money is not the universal and only solution to all problems.
Money's not a universal solution. But in this particular case it would help. If re plant owners had to pay for the damage they inflicted on those around them, then given a choice between a site where they had to pay because people were there and a site where they did not have to pay because people were not there, what would they choose?
Also, enforcing economic solutions does not necessarily prevent adding other non economic solutions. For an economic activity, such as production of these chemicals, economic solutions can go a really really long way to bettering behavior.
Is neoprene really the only way to make wet suits? I doubt it.
Regulate. A dirty word on HN, surely. Regulate the production of and, possibly, the import of neoprene, etc. Force industries to innovate - I know that's not a dirty word here - in order to sell these goods to Americans. Maybe then America becomes the sole producer of environmentally-friendly wet-suits to the whole of the word.
I think this is the only solution since your proposed solution of just "put the plants somewhere else" is, as you've pointed out, untenable.
That's a strawman. The argument is not about the fact that there are chemical plants in cancer alley at all, it's about practices in chemical plants. Dumping waste is not a necessary result of producing chemicals.
Green chemistry[1] designs systems and reactions that don't produce waste. This can be as simple as reusing water or as complex as alternative reactions (as is the case for making nylon without nitric acid). In some cases green chemistry can even save money. You can also collect and use waste for other purposes or put it into long term storage eg using it as a filler in concrete. There is practically no such thing as useless waste, only coordination problems.
The only "problem" here is stopping people/companies from dumping into the ground and water.
> "Many cases of cancer have occurred in communities on both sides of the river, though the Louisiana Tumor Registry claims the numbers are not higher than the national average"
So... what are we then supposed to gather from this statement?
We gather that the author did not acquire numbers from either side of the river, the Louisiana Tumor Registry, nor anything representing the national average.
Louisiana is a wonderful mix of good things tainted with backwards thinking and selfishness. It is uniquely great and tragically flawed.
There are several things at play in Louisiana:
- the US economy runs on noxious chemicals made in Louisiana
- families are tight
- people are at peace with adversity
- the food and music are like nowhere else
- everyone knows everyone
- the well off who stay in Louisana are very greedy and small minded
- people there have a way of life that is slowly going away and they feel threatened and short changed
This produces exactly what you'd expect.
I lived in central and western Louisiana for two years and also had business there off and on for several more years. I love Louisiana. I love the closeness of the families, the polite friendly attitudes, the amazing food, the laid back fun culture. I love the salt-of-the-earth people. Mixed in is a lot of ignorance, backwardness, and amongst those with money or power: selfishness, corruption, and nepotism.
Louisiana will remain in this low simmer of tragedy forever. As long as there are chemical plants there will be small communities of working poor. As long as there are small tight nit communities of working poor that can endure, along with pollution, there will be environmental tragedies.
Louisiana will never change. I imagine 200 years from now Louisiana will be one big superfund site which elite Americans are (once a year) horrified to find people still live in. It'll probably be some long-form bit of journalism just like this. People will say "oh that's terrible" and things will continue on as they always have.
Louisiana is a lot like the Rust Belt in the sense that people have been able to graduate with a high school degree for generations and with the right connections, land a life-long job at a chemical plant paying good money with better-than-average benefits, mostly due to pension plans being baked into their benefits because they work for multinational corporations. They have been conditioned to believe that education is not important while being constantly exposed to casual racism and are thus heavily conservative... the large Catholic population in the southern part of the state has certainly played a part in moving in that direction given the Democratic Party's stance on women's rights. They are also highly sensitive to any issue that negatively affects the petrochemical industry. Local politicians have tried to introduce other types of business to the region, but who wants to go to an area where the heat is oppressive, the education system sucks, and you're a hurricane away from not having power or clean water for a month?
Most people in that state are like most people in other states with respect to banal "exceptionalism." They believe that their culture and way of life is greater than that of other areas even though the average citizen is poorly educated.
The author talks to a lot of people in the state about the conflict between loving the outdoors (outdoor sports/hunting/recreation are big) and supporting companies that dump chemicals in the bayous, because of jobs. There's a lot of fatalism.
Louisiana sounds like hell. Guess they sold their souls for jobs. They seem OK with that.
> The risk of cancer in Reserve, a community founded by freed slaves, is 800 times the national average, making the community, by one EPA metric, the most carcinogenic census tract in America—the cause is a DuPont/Denka chemical plant adjacent to the town that annually spews 250,000 pounds of the likely carcinogen chloroprene into the air. If you think the situation in Flint is bad, there are approximately 400 public water systems in Louisiana with lead or other hazardous substances leaching into the drinking water. Meanwhile, hundreds of petrochemical plants peppered across the state’s lush swampy interior freely emit carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and neurotoxins into the air and water, as well as inject them deep into the earth.
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[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadFor humans, by humans.
Not an expert by any means, but aren't we looking at +2 meters sea level rise by 2100? Maybe less than 1 meter by 2050? Try it out!
IMHO, it would be better not to wait for global warming to take care of this for us. Coastal erosion due factors other than climate in Louisiana is a different (probably more urgent) problem which actually can be solved without world government. Just better government in Louisiana, which...well, OK, yeah, it's probably not going to happen. :)
I return to visit New Orleans about three to four times per year. On every visit, someone will half-jokingly ask me, "So when are you going to leave crazy California and move back?" I simply reply, "When are you going to flee Louisiana?" I have a convenient excuse in that I work in tech, and my family members convince themselves that's the only reason I don't move back. I tell them that I'm never moving back, but they stubbornly hold on to hope. My family isn't the stereotypical American-without-a-passport untraveled, uncultured types. My sisters have lived in Paris, London, Oregon, Maine, Maryland, DC, Texas, Georgia etc. My mom lived in Barcelona for stretches and speaks three languages. Yet they all end up back in the New Orleans area. Family bonds are that strong. Maybe I'm cold and too calculating for not living there with them.
After every good visit with the kids, nephews, aunts and uncles, my wife prods me, "Hey maybe we should live closer to your family." I just reply "No." The answer is simple: Louisiana, and New Orleans especially, is doomed as an ongoing entity. Call it fatalism, call it blindness, or call it stupidity, whatever the reason -- the people of Louisiana just keep on doing the same thing with the same reaction every time something bad happens; "Oh that's such a shame."
New Orleans' nickname is the "big easy"; I call it "the tiny difficult". Nothing ever changes. Progress is slow and glacial. Everyone knows everyone and has their nose in everyone else's business. You live a good life in Old Metairie with a nice weekend home in rural Louisiana. You find out that the wilderness near your home has recently been purchased. The land hasn't ever been touched, so you do some digging into it. You find out that they're going to clearcut the forest and wetlands and build an "oil services facility" on it with "mixed use commercial and residential" on the other side. This worries you because of the loss of wetlands and buffer zone (the forest would soak up flood waters in storms), and you're worried about pollution from the increased land use. You object to the project formally because you're well off and have some free time. Only later, you find out that your opponents are your very rich neighbors in Old Metairie -- doctors and lawyers speculating on land with their friends in the oil business. They start saying bad things and calling you names like a tree hugger and eco-mentalist. Others say that you're blocking progress and aren't thinking of the community and jobs. Eventually, the crooked tentacles of corruption will make their way through the bureaucracies and you will lose. Your neighbors will make more money, "progress" will happen, and you'll now deal with floods annually on a property that never flooded in hundreds of years.
The craziest thing about this tale isn't that it's true. It's that the very people profiting from this and pulling the levers are in the state. They're not always far-off corporations. They're your neighbors: pillars of local industry and commerce who are lauded for their success. It's insane to me that these people are looting and ravaging the very land that they live, and that they will continue to live on. It's one thing to be a wild tycoon, burn the locals and flee. But they're knowingly (or blindingly) hurting themselves, their families, and future generations. Maybe it's the constant layer of corruption in the state at every ...
I stayed after Katrina because I was all romantic on helping New Orleans recover. I have been so much happier since I left a few years ago. I love my friends in New Orleans, but I'm never moving back.
For those not familiar with the background, it's a reference to the gubernatorial race between Edwin Edwards (convicted felon and known outright thief) and David Duke (former? Ku Klux Klan grand wizard). Yes. Those were our two choices to lead the state: a criminal and a segregationist.
How do you end up in this predicament? It's not overnight, and it's not one person or group. While the bumper stickers were trying to make a joke out of a bad situation, I found them emblematic of the sad situation and became disgusted with it all. So I did the only thing in my realm of control, and I left.
Or maybe we should really treat it as The City That Care Forgot? Order another round, swing that doo-rag around the second line, and forget about the reality staring us in the face. Crank up the tunes man. Hey, at least WWOZ streams over the Internet now.
Those who have the ability and power to change the city are its citizens. Always stand up for what you believe in and contribute wherever you can. Engage with or become a civil servant. Vote. Democratic progress is slow but inevitable if we stay focused.
Perhaps the city in its current form is beyond saving. At the very least it may serve as a giant remediation laboratory should technology to reverse humanity's assault on nature and all its inhabitants be developed. Ironically, the solution will likely come from nature.
My mom is always sending me articles (she literally mails me newspaper clippings) about new tech jobs and a burgeoning startup scene in New Orleans... but I just cannot shake the feeling that it's all on borrowed time.
It obviously worked for our parents, but I cannot imagine investing my time and energy into a life and future there.
It often seems that there's something of an inverse proportion in the public outrage over some event vs. the actual damage caused.
VW cheats on emissions for cars that are a tiny of a percent of total cars sold in the USA --- huge fines, mass outrage, because why not? There's really no downside.
New Orleans is chemically polluted for decades, cancer hot zone, etc --- shut up, business as usual, because we need the jobs.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
Agent Orange is not a chemical weapon, it is a defoliant. Dioxin contamination was a result of improper manufacture, not a deliberate ingredient. Read the wikipedia page, FFS.
I hate it when this happens. Do I now have to question the rest of the article?
Indeed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Agent_Orange_on_the...
Relevant quote:
"Agent Orange is a chemical weapon most notably used by the US armed forces during the Vietnam War, classified as defoliant. "
The US saying it is not a chemical weapon is a bit like them declaring 'enhanced interrogation' not torture.
And yes, the original article definitely plays pretty fast and loose with scientific terminology to amp up the scare factor. A cup of coffee contains "likely carcinogens", mutagens and teratogens, the issue is the quantity and the likely effect.
Agent Orange is an herbicide and defoliant chemical.
Furthermore, this question was actually litigated and decided "not a chemical weapon" in the US. Again, from the wikipedia article on Agent Orange (emphasis mine):
"Three judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Weinstein's ruling to dismiss the case. They ruled that, though the herbicides contained a dioxin (a known poison), they were not intended to be used as a poison on humans. Therefore, they were not considered a chemical weapon and thus not a violation of international law. A further review of the case by the whole panel of judges of the Court of Appeals also confirmed this decision. The lawyers for the Vietnamese filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. On March 2, 2009, the Supreme Court denied certiorari and refused to reconsider the ruling of the Court of Appeals."
No matter how you feel about Agent Orange the original article's statement about dioxin is just factually wrong.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/monsanto-roundup...
Additionally, the second paragraph of the article contains a misleading statement about the risk of cancer in Reserve -- "800 times the national average". The data [1] is still shocking and generally backs up the article: there is a lot of chloroprene being dumped in the air in John the Baptist Parish, and the cancer risk there is the highest in the nation. But the 800x metric is only a summation of specifically enumerated, mostly chemical "point sources". If you sort by total cancer risk (most notably including emissions from cars and trucks), some of the tracts in the parish are only 2-4x the cancer risk of tracts in Manhattan and San Francisco.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/2011-nati...
[1] https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/nata-freq...
Obviously there must be something stopping them, what is it?
Could a firm step in in hopes of getting a big pay day going up against the huge titans of the Chemical industry? Probably. Just hasn't happened yet, I'd say.
If that sort of pressure can be applied to people working cases that affect just one doctor in a community like this, I sure wouldn't want to to see what kind of pressure the chemical companies could bring to bear.
I stopped reading there because I could think of no interpretation of that statement where the claim was even remotely plausible. The overall risk of developing some kind of cancer at some point in your life in the U.S. is about 40% [1]. Life expectancy is just shy of 80 years, so the annual risk of cancer is 0.5%. For the risk in Reserve to be 800 times that, the entire population would have to come down with cancer every three months. If that happened, it would be a bigger story.
[1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probabi...
It's 826 per million.
http://www.fox8live.com/story/33542135/air-of-uncertainty-ep...
Even if we take this 826 number at face value (and I don't see that number anywhere on the EPA page) then for that to be 800 times higher than the national average, then the national average would have to be 1 in a million -- over what time period? Annually? Life time? This whole discussion is a hopeless mess. But again, I can't think of any interpretation under which one in a million is a reasonable measure of anything. There are only 300 million people in the U.S. One in a million means there are 300 people who are affected. Three times that many people are diagnosed with cancer every day in the U.S.
"One can only imagine the zilch level of concern for a compound like chloroprene by President Trump, who had at his side when he signed an executive order in February stipulating the roll-back of government regulations the chief executive of Dow Chemical—“Andrew, I would like to thank you for…the fantastic job you’ve done,” Trump told Dow chief Andrew Liveris, then handed him his signing pen to keep as a souvenir."
Trump is the president. He should care.
The 40% risk of getting cancer doesn't mean 40% of the population will get cancer. Environmental factors increase the risk. I'm not quite sure how you're arriving at that conclusion.
Actually, that's exactly what it means. 42% will develop cancer at some point in their lives, and 22% will die of it. Follow the link I provided to see the details.
I doubt the Argentinians will go along with that.
Alternatively, put them next to the houses of the owners and management and the schools of their children.
Of course it's competitive.
I'm saying, pull requests are welcome.
Of course, taking a purely economic view is fairly cold and uncaring. The other issues should also be at play. But I don't think they offer anything more generous to these companies
Also, enforcing economic solutions does not necessarily prevent adding other non economic solutions. For an economic activity, such as production of these chemicals, economic solutions can go a really really long way to bettering behavior.
Unfortunately the other option is to move the plant to the third world and kill poor people who can't afford to fight back.
Regulate. A dirty word on HN, surely. Regulate the production of and, possibly, the import of neoprene, etc. Force industries to innovate - I know that's not a dirty word here - in order to sell these goods to Americans. Maybe then America becomes the sole producer of environmentally-friendly wet-suits to the whole of the word.
I think this is the only solution since your proposed solution of just "put the plants somewhere else" is, as you've pointed out, untenable.
http://www.patagonia.com/yulex-natural-rubber-wetsuits.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenium_argentatum
Green chemistry[1] designs systems and reactions that don't produce waste. This can be as simple as reusing water or as complex as alternative reactions (as is the case for making nylon without nitric acid). In some cases green chemistry can even save money. You can also collect and use waste for other purposes or put it into long term storage eg using it as a filler in concrete. There is practically no such thing as useless waste, only coordination problems.
The only "problem" here is stopping people/companies from dumping into the ground and water.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/greenchemistry
So... what are we then supposed to gather from this statement?
The writer has clickbait syndrome?
also since when is binary camouflage a thing for the military?
There are several things at play in Louisiana:
- the US economy runs on noxious chemicals made in Louisiana
- families are tight
- people are at peace with adversity
- the food and music are like nowhere else
- everyone knows everyone
- the well off who stay in Louisana are very greedy and small minded
- people there have a way of life that is slowly going away and they feel threatened and short changed
This produces exactly what you'd expect.
I lived in central and western Louisiana for two years and also had business there off and on for several more years. I love Louisiana. I love the closeness of the families, the polite friendly attitudes, the amazing food, the laid back fun culture. I love the salt-of-the-earth people. Mixed in is a lot of ignorance, backwardness, and amongst those with money or power: selfishness, corruption, and nepotism.
Louisiana will remain in this low simmer of tragedy forever. As long as there are chemical plants there will be small communities of working poor. As long as there are small tight nit communities of working poor that can endure, along with pollution, there will be environmental tragedies.
Louisiana will never change. I imagine 200 years from now Louisiana will be one big superfund site which elite Americans are (once a year) horrified to find people still live in. It'll probably be some long-form bit of journalism just like this. People will say "oh that's terrible" and things will continue on as they always have.
Most people in that state are like most people in other states with respect to banal "exceptionalism." They believe that their culture and way of life is greater than that of other areas even though the average citizen is poorly educated.
The author talks to a lot of people in the state about the conflict between loving the outdoors (outdoor sports/hunting/recreation are big) and supporting companies that dump chemicals in the bayous, because of jobs. There's a lot of fatalism.
> The risk of cancer in Reserve, a community founded by freed slaves, is 800 times the national average, making the community, by one EPA metric, the most carcinogenic census tract in America—the cause is a DuPont/Denka chemical plant adjacent to the town that annually spews 250,000 pounds of the likely carcinogen chloroprene into the air. If you think the situation in Flint is bad, there are approximately 400 public water systems in Louisiana with lead or other hazardous substances leaching into the drinking water. Meanwhile, hundreds of petrochemical plants peppered across the state’s lush swampy interior freely emit carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and neurotoxins into the air and water, as well as inject them deep into the earth.