For decades, residents living near large petrochemical facilities in the nation’s industrial corridors have struggled to secure even a basic understanding of the health risks that they face. These Americans have asked the government for monitoring devices to measure the quality of the air they breathe, and environmental advocates have demanded formal health assessments that account for the full spectrum of industrial emissions in their neighborhoods, rather than ones that only examine pollution sources in isolation. The Environmental Protection Agency has long failed to develop a robust response to these calls — until now.
Standing behind a podium in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish on Thursday, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced a proposal to cut more than 6,000 tons of toxic air pollution a year, as well as vastly reduce the number of people exposed to cancer-causing chemicals such as ethylene oxide and benzene. (For comparison, industrial facilities in the U.S. released some 32,000 tons of cancer-causing chemicals in 2021).
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