Document omjeB8yZKaww9K6vy4ezB079g

day, December 22, 1987 The V\51IINGTONfOST THE CHEMICAL CORRIDOR J AsJj K+h)} `aj 33 P* C/> O U1 ro tn &< C-4YN* U'l Y.ASrtlNGTC* POST Kay Gaudet, left, became concerned when sister Peggy Hoffman and nine other women she knew had miscarriages. Jobs and Illness in Petrochemical Corridor In Louisiana, Pollution Is Familiar but Pattern of Disease Is New By David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf WuhiflftQfl post Staff Wntets ST. GABRIEL, La.--Kay Gaudet, the village pharmacist, started keeping her list one year ago. The first name on it was Peggy, her younger sister. The next nine were friends and neighbors. All had been pregnant about the same time, but there were no babies to show for it, only the private agony of miscarriage. Gaudet was concerned and curious. Was it coincidence? How many other women in St. Gabriel, population 2,100, had suffered similar fates? Gaudet spread the word at her drug store, at the Catholic church where she prayed each day and up and down the oak-lined river roads. Anyone who's had a miscarriage, tell Kay. da, Charlotte, Dayna, Dell, Elizabeth, Emma, Irma, Karen, Matlin, Pam. Rhonda, Sandy, Sherri, Tammy, Terri, Tina, Tyra, Vera. Today, the names total 63, St. Gabriel lies along an 85-mile industrial corri dor where about one-fifth of America's petrochem icals are produced. It begins in Baton Rouge, with the giant tinkertoy maze of pipes, stacks and catcrackers in the shadows of Huey Long's skyscraper capitol building, and follows the Mississippi River down to the southeastern rim of New Orleans. The air, ground and water along this corridor are so full of carcinogens, mutagens and ernbryotoxins that an environmental health specialist defined living here as "a massive human experiment," the state attorney geneial called the pollution "a modern form of bar- c LOI'JSJ W\. Ain. Cel 1 Residents Tally Cancer Cases, Miscarriages fRuffm MeLibi. right, till a Btloa JUu<4 porch %lth WU!1* Fif.iraoU MeLlaa wrkd 11 Capslymtr Rubber *id Che-iical Cerp, la bsckfreuad, asd nyi (b* m*l] sad uIh an ih* pric* titeb* tOCiaiANA, T n Al wism.' and a chemical union leader now -efera to it as 'the notional sacrifice wne.* Ai it rolls south, tne Mississippi n an rndlesa progression of wide (oops. Seen" ,rrom (he sky, (hey resemble colossal quo icn marks--nghtside up and upside Mum--each quiiueal urn lined with petfi-hemiojl plants, refineries and toxic why there are so many names an Kay Gau* det'sltst. Her figures mean that one of every three pregnancies there s.nce 1953 has ended tn feul death, more than double the Louisiana avenge As the numbers grew, Gaudcf ind many others hen began (0 think what was once unthinkable: Perhaps the local chem ical pints--id of them witbm five miles of town, eight more across the r.ver ,n plaque- waste dumps, and dotted at bottom Or top mine--had something to do With it. Nearly >y a town Question marks loom large in 400 million pounds of toxic pollutant! are -my of these (owns, not just m the poetic released, into (he atmosphere here each icsp of the river but in the life-and-deith y**f wluV-ng*'*w fws-jwwhd* of vinyl, .oneerns of the people. chloride, ad-'ingredlent of'pbttic that is a' In Plaquemme, they wonder why Tiger Carcinogen and suspeeted er'bryc'oxin* '' ' - Gr/ta and six other people came down with lung, brain or h-dney cancer on One 'Sbmethlng Was Very Wrong* mail span of Dc''cro,x $treet. Their parish - ,), ISc'. "e. 4 one of 10 ui :hc of LoyiSivj that -ank in the top 10 percent Of lung^tacer - L nadonnii** and wkile the pvireeni. TT.l hypothesis was not fis.lv posed in S(, Cabr.ei- For decades, the towns ec> nociiC health has bees ted to the Chemical aad petroleum refinery companies lured to -XoujaUr-a afftr \fjxld jJV If, provirf'ig hi!f r- of cjtrtfe s-w>e's here is high, pti^ of its manufacturing income.'Some hus c health special,.s think there might be bands of the miscarrying women worked m nore to it. Tiger Joe. who died of lung cart those plants, which employ one of every chemicals, such as vinyl chloride, and their possible effecta, and it just clicked. I had (0* raise the question, I did.* My mom Is al ways saying to me, 'Kay, shut up, didn't you ever xt that Silkuood movie? If you're not worried about yourself, what about your teds/' And 1 say that's exactly what [`m wor- ned about--my kid*,' /Gaudet and her husband, Chris, have t*o healthy little girls. The oldest. Cnrist.r.e, 9, has watched her mother so carefully over the past year that she knows the issues, sometimes pretending she is a television re porter: With imaginary microphone m hand, she asks: Why are all these babies dying1 That quest on is being explored by the Tulane School of Environmental iiea'ih. but officials (here do not expeet to solve the mvstery A fcWbtudiea done in the Un'ted States, C.na-'a ird Erg'srd shew an ab-or* mo,:y h.jn rate ef ipor.cai.ee--* abort,uni Iftd b.rth defects among women whose hus bands work near vtqfi ctildfidc or who live XOvVfTm?- f.'j'h -vJSTl-eMordc polymena*ticn p'-r.tj But as Tulane scientist Lu Ann White er three years ago, never smoked. In CMImette, ldi Trapini would like to ,now why the street she lives on, Jacobs Drive, became known is 'Cancer Alley." with 15 cancer victims in (wo blocks, and vhy. s half-mile sway on Deeomme Street, -r sister and nephew were among seven ancer victims on one block. On Coco Road in Geiamzr, whose yelowiolvgreen industrial plume can be seen 10 miles away, they ask why cats and dogs live test their Mir, why sfuminum screens u soon after they are installed and why ten-age and mtedte-age men are dying of xjney and testicular cancer. In (he oM company town of Norco, iwtfahst Milton Cambre putzles over the disppenrancc of Spanish moss from the live vik stands and crawfish from the ponds, Middles, marshes and canals. And in St, Gabriel, they Want to know five laborers in the state. Gaudet grew up m company village up at the huge Exxon re finery m Baton Rouge, where her father still operitei the pipes. From birth, the was accustomed to the sights and smells of heavy industry But to be fatnil'Sf, she decided, IS not to be immune. "I'm not trymg to be s hell-raiser or a goody-goody, I just think we have a situa tion that needs answering,* said Gaudet, 37, whose pharmacy just past the srppfight on Rte. 74 has become a cksnnghouae and meeting place. When I first aUrted with the list, some people wanted me to say nght away that the chemicals were at fault. But I didn't want to uy anything tMt I didn't know to be true. Then last summer, it Started to get out of control, when four women miscar ried m eight days. | realised that something was very wrong hen. I started Studying the told the St. Gabriel women at a meeting m late August; *ll`s very possible you may never get a definitive answer.' Fred Loy and Richard Kremer of the Louisiana Chemical Association uy the pau city of definitive scientific evidence makes them feel as if they sre 'Muling ghosts' in responding to charges aga.rst the industry. Once, when asked about the St. Gabriel sit uation, Loy uid: 'Before we cart conclude anything, the slate has to find out if there is even z problem, how bad it j* and what is causing it ,.,, They say the chemic il plants ire Causing the miscarriages, but they have no proof. I could uy they screw too much and that's the cause of the mis carriages. But then I would have no way to prove that.' `It's human nature to want to blame something, whether it's God or industry or your body," Kremer uid, 'The industry sometimes gets more than its share of crit icism. We feel that in this area vie have an exemplary environmental record .... We have been pretty responsible neighbors,* The chemical eorridor was hewn from a simple rural society in a flat, ser.iitropical wedge of the M.saiuippi Basin. Vast sugar cane plantations, worked first by slaves, then by tenant farmers, enriched the aris tocratic owners of French descent who l>td m mmi;-) jr-J fne ioc,et/ cf New Orleans a the,*; stea"bcat r.ie zva> Enclaves grew up m the shadow o' tv.,:s< es tates, pockets of poor blacks and Acaddns who fished, hur.tcd and trapped in t'-e buy- ouj and ertfed on at/eeta named lor their families. When World War II sparked in oil and pTs> gCS boom elsewhere in the State, industry put its refineries along the river with its shipping lanes. Petrochemicals, made with petroleum prOv.ded by refineries and with salt, Sulfur and water provided by nature, followed easily. By the 1970s. the industrial eorndor was known as Arne.tea's Ruhr, producing 60 percent of the nation's vinyl chloride, 60 percent of the nitrogen fertilizers and 26 percent of the i-ilorine. Today, the river a lined with 135 petrochemical plants and seven ml refineries, nearly^ne for every half mile of the Mississippi. Jobs, Money and Pollution The jobs and money, they brought to JO river pirishes transformed one of the poor- e<i, sicAeit-grow.rg sections of Louisiana into commurt.ties of brick houses and sho^ ping centers. ' But they also brought pollution. The nar row cor.'.fur absorbs more t:x,c substance* tnnually than do most enure states: carcin ogens such as benzene, carbon tetrachloride and ethylene d,chlor.de: experimental mu tagens or (eta! poisons Such as toluene, eth ylene oxide and chloroform. Coast Guard divers retrieving sediment samples from a bayou in 1976 suffered aecond-degreo burrs Ort their hands. 5t. Gabriel. Gtismar and PUquemme alone--10 square milei--can pollute the air with as much as 25 million pounds per year of these chemicals and dump 75 million pounds of industrial mites into the Miiiis- sippi, according to studies. Another 3,5 mil lion tons of toxic debris--more than 1 per cent of the nation's total--ia buried, dumped in landfills and stored in Surface ponds or injected through underground metal pipes deep into the earth. Toxic fumei from a waste site near the Devil's Swamp section of Baton Rouge caused nausea, headaches and vomiting in workers two blocks away during a cleanup effort Last month Despite its longterm dilution in the en vironment. the corridor pollution teaves telltale tracks. In the 1970a, the Environ- s mental Protection*Agency found 66 pollut ants tn New Orleans dmkng water and 3) lethal ehemio^ s"inv air of flaqucrun* The groundwater of 23 industrial suei along the river is saturated With taxie out ter>a!, bufTdftWg towxrd tiw druieng-** ter aquifers of eonununilin served by veils, - Motorist! dmSag down the cor^dor'i main highway in reminded in byperbolq p, the ultimate chenbcal disaster. *Bhopai or the Bayou.7' read* a billboard touted b> workers oo ttnki-troca toe erf the _p*tr> chemical plantx -,i ^' Such a reguQ might be expected to re semble a confuted, sooty notch .to the Rust Belt, Not tto chemical temdor, it* nut neighborhoods and foreau of s>Lr;',. pipes. PoiluLza regute/s quietly h^re--r the Oily ta^te of New Orleans water, which Caji-k cOJWliW.Ta C7TP-..T ca.1 pcj fvery'tbicg frcm Vi-'5n to rec bei-vs av rice: in the bUckerrd leaves of L-u:t trees tn the aend odor cid wh.te parttc^ate L'f out iiom the Murpby Oil Refi.-ery in CM' meite, ui the evacuation of Che tOra r Good Hope. For. JO years, resident* there, including Charles'led Barbara Rob<beJux kept Ukcif smtcar-i packed tn flee ooethlV fires at a local refinery. *We always kept Our valuables ui a ufe place where we could grab them at a mo ment'! notice,' recalled Charles Reb^ cheaiix. $4. The 100 farrulica of Good Hope devised a waning system, kneteng at each others doors to rouse ne.ghtorx. often t the middle of the ught. They wwJd meek at the Prcsbytcnaa church Where they kept their cart facing the nver--the path of cape. The refinery bought out the Robichezut family and other residents in the eariy 1980s, and today Good Hope conuta of i few abandoned structures and weeds. From whole communities, the diafupoOk devolves to the individual trauma of Je*s< Billings, an M&tfatic from PlaquenuM felled from her ndmg lawn mower Jaat Air 6* Louisiana, aj l oa i t, l__________ Prosperity, Illness and a Common Thread of Pollution LOUISIANA. Tnm A10 "It's just in every block of this mechanic for seven years in one of Story said. *We have not been able small town* of 10.000 people, smd the Geismer plants, DA$F Corp,, (0 determine any workplace rela , fit by 4 bluish cloud of chlorine, Gulotta, a city councilman "Every and his story prompts union leaders tionship." ftldl, she uid. was released with where you turn, you find some to question some companies' com The centnl issue facing Geismer out timing by the Dow Chemical body's got cancer," mitment to health and safety, inside and the enure corridor is how to co plant 300 yards from her backyard. i-' She has heard some experts pm und outride of their gates. Before exist with the plants. No one is rec Hospitalised (or three weeks with the cancers on smoking, but Gulotta BASF locked out Cudd and other ommending the shutdown of com- respiratory iflments, Billings, $0, knows that Tiger Jce never str.kmg wotker* in June 1554, he p.'.mtt So vita! ts Louisiana's for said, *1 respect chlorine just hke I smoked She also knows that since handled equipment doused in toxic tunes. The most common prescrip respect a gun.* Dow Chemical opened in the 1950s, chemicals, including cancer-causing tion is regulation. Her thick-skinned defense is 4* and other companies followed, the formaldehyde, Cudd said In an in But within Louisiana's traditional rv*wr in the chemical corridor, lightning bugs she caught as a !i*tie terview m late October. political culture, the environment where pollution is woven into life girl in Plaquemine have tl'S.'.p- 'They would send us out to pull a has only recently received atten patterns much the way noise be peared. So have the cMgonr a ir.z vv.e, and It would be full Of Chem tion, There are no fulltime environ come* part of communities in the the river shrimp, once plentiful. icals,* he recalled. "Impossible to do mental lobbyists m Baton Rouge, path of jetliners. But the threat of The pecan trees in her backyard it without getting i( on US. ft was while the chemical association ius catastrophic disease has turned bore deformed nuts this year, qu.te frequent that we'd have five and the association of business these river settlements into a cor *Jt has helped the ecT.cf\, ,* C-- c,,i.',:.cn!s on our clothes and and industry has 10 more. The ridor of fear, iotU said. 'But if it s going to m.| us hand* ' state Department Of Environmental Kay Gludtt'i list Of miscarriages all, what good is ?* Two of Cudd's coworkers devel Quality a not funded by the legis is'only (he latest mamfestStlQA of The question echoes throughout oped testicular cancer in recent lature. relying solely on fines, per that fear. More detailed, scientific the corridor, especially in face* vevs, Another has stomach cancer. mit fees and federal grants. Kata document cancer death rates Such as Gcismer, a predm'iu.K.iiy A fourth killed himself after sus Every plant is required by state that grew as the chemical corridor black town across the river from pecting that he had developed a law to obtain permits for water and grew. By the late 1970s, the area P'aq-jen-'ne and next to St 0:- .! brr.n fmor. fn September. d-VtOrs air emissions. But the legislature had enjoyed and end.red IS to 20 Many fanlv> ^-'r t,i, *.:'i Cadi. 45, that he had kidney exempted air pollute.-S bu.lt before yean Of induitrialiution, the esti there since their s'aie ar.c*, -e- \er and find three to six months 1570. and parts of half of the state's mated latency perod for caro.io- ceivcd lard after t` e Civ.l " t.1 e !!s J cd Nov 7. plants qualify. Where permits are grns, that Once fed them N'.a' ,l 1 \1!' v I piaragsr Les $:*- required, critics say, the State is too Statistics compiled by (he Nation the earth lie fallow i r, ii.J, : <? *, ;; ny requires pr gcr.eroui m sc",:.; ;,,r..:s and too al Cancer Institute show that the well water. The frv - : - ; tOs-ve e':'k*g for workers han- lenient in enforcing them State has the nation's frghesl lung years agn with the c,cr 1 ''j inJ (hit any ex;> Companies frequently exceed cancer mortality rate for w,k,:e of 30 cow`$ gra;'g i s.:e n .k's- -il* ty Cudd was "in their permits without penalty. males. 25 percent higher than the leader Amos Favorite 1 v ' it,on of our procedure" As for There were 78 'accidental re Mtwul average during the 1970s. Neal Cudd u a maintenance ! hval-fi problems of BASF employes. leases* and six spills by 14 of the 18 Sn river parishes ranked among plant! in the Geismer-St. Gabriel the top (0 percent of U,S. counties area m the first nine months of for such deaths, and New Orleans, 1988, totaling 47,800 pounds and in 1974-78 survey of nine Other 4,100 gallons of air pollutants, ac tumor registries, scored 45 percent cording to a Sierra Club Study. higher than average. Mortality rates have increased Among the 14 offenders, (wo were fined. 2.S percent annually since 1950, and 90 of every 100.000 white Industry (n Government males dwd of the disease in the The industry, meanwhile, has 1970s compared to 52 per 100,000 from 1950 to 1989. At least one river pariah ranks among the top 5 percent nationwide of deaths been able to retain its tax breaks (10-year property tax exemptions for new or expanding manufactur ers) by controlling state boards and caused by cancer of the lung, stom local councils that nuke such deci ach. gall bladder, intestine, liver,: sions. 1a PisquemiiK. for instance, pancreas, bladder, thyroid, e*C- Etta Lee Gulotta ia the only one of phigu* and siun. six City Council members who does oot work for chemicsl company. Link to Cincer Uncertain At Louisiana State University, Dr. Paul Templet, chairman of the Pollution's rule in the corridor's environmental policies department, cancer profile is open to debate. Studies by Dr. Marisc 5, Gottlieb of said his staff has never received funding to study chemical pollutants the Tulane University School of along the corndor because *it Medicine showed that people who hasn't been politically favorable to drink water ftom the Mississippi do so.* After Gottlieb's studies sug have 'significantly higher" rates of rectal cancer than consumers of gesting a Ink between cancers and chemical pollution, her funding well water ard that residents wnhm ore mile of large petrochemical plants have a 4,5 times higher 'chance of getting lung ci'cer than those living 1 to 3 ro.les away . Industry officials say the studies are flawed because they are based on death certificates that often con tain erroneous data Dr. Walter Hutoft. associate medical director of Ethyl Corp in Baton Rouge, said that while extreme checiical expo sures might lead to cancer and oth er serious diseases, he docs r,5l be lieve the levels here -ire high enough to have 'an adverse effect on health.* (V a: th* Ochsner CVii m New O-'eji* fV til-i si.d A CHEMICAL GLOSSARY BEN2C.HE; A Csar, llemmab'e liquid used as a soWent m tn rubber and plastm industries and as a cnemicai inurmed,ate, or budding block, in th* ' synthesis Of pflatmaeeuticals and detergents High e<scsurt to benzene can deprtts th* central nervous i,v`em, cauS'i-g hudac^**, nausea and toss of rrust** af coc'i -at 3 en* is a recog'<(Cd hu'"j" cs-c rat ea.ses leukem* and has in -cJ'ii'i-v;; a a, in tn tra ce'ls ir tr-e her* "a*?;* trt CAneO'i TETRACHLOOiCC A rf-"ji-mat'e eo'oness liouid used in -- e **' : .s a*C ca.se liver dried up. Louisiana Attorney General Wil liam J Gu*:e, Jr, bUmes the EPA for poor regulation, cr.Lcu'ng the agency for "unwillingness or inabil ity* to set limits o toxic sir con taminants and for failure to inves tigate the health effects of heavy chemical fallout tn the state. The Clean Air Act of 1970 re quires the EPA to regulate haiardOus air pollutants. Seventeen year* later, the agency has emission stan- I dards for seven substance*, and the [ list does not include many of the t ecmdor'* dead'-e^t chemical*. An j EPA spokesman Said setting stan- j d'-is 'or 'he os-.tar- nan'' is 'si (MGri:r,,ir.'v txreftj.ve ard time- ! 37 0o 0) O o tft ro