More than 180 polluting facilities nationwide, including dozens in Louisiana, emailed requests. Many were granted a two-year pause on compliance with Clean Air Act rules.
Paraquat has been linked to Parkinson’s disease and just a sip is fatal, but tens of thousands of pounds of it are being released in the Mississippi Basin.
As lawsuits by mostly Democrat-controlled municipalities and states move through the courts, Republican-controlled statehouses like Louisiana’s are proposing a growing number of bills like HB804, to immunize polluters from climate liability.
Lawyers for residents say that zoning that concentrates pollution in Black districts is a violation of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.
Frequent contact with the carcinogen ethylene oxide can boost the odds of developing cancer up to 60 times — risk levels that should raise red flags in Louisiana, which produces 20% of the nation’s ethylene oxide emissions within its 85-mile industrial corridor, known as Cancer Alley.
Experts and residents decry hazards to people and lack of regulations, transparency
Last year, Louisiana legislators passed a “million-dollar muzzle,” which barred the use of community-gathered air-quality data to advocate for pollution control and enforcement, with fines as high as $1 million per violation.
