reservelanote

The sum of the "point cancer risk" from local carcinogenic emissions, including chloroprene, is about 800x the national average.

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.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/nata-freq...

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.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/2011-nati...