Coast city a ‘hot spot’ for industrial emissions that may cause cancer, investigation finds
The industries that have drawn thousands of people to live and work in Jackson County have also made Pascagoula a hot spot for emissions linked to causing cancer, according to a national investigation by the nonprofit reporting site ProPublica.
Ingalls Shipbuilding, for example, emits carcinogens that may increase the lifetime risk of cancer for people in the immediate area to a level four times higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency considers acceptable, according to the analysis.
Around the Chevron refinery, the risk could be up to 2.4 times higher than the EPA’s standard. Around Rolls Royce Naval Marine, it could be 3.4 times higher.
These risk levels apply to areas of 810 square meters around the facilities. ProPublica’s analysis divided the entire country into squares of that size. Journalists used a computer model and emissions data from the EPA to analyze the concentration of carcinogenic emissions and associated cancer risk in each grid square. The results are shown in an interactive map.
Around the country, ProPublica found that more than 250,000 Americans are exposed to cancer risk levels the EPA considers too high. But the agency isn’t legally required to penalize polluters for creating risks beyond that level, and it generally doesn’t.
The EPA aims to protect as many people as possible from an excess cancer risk higher than one in 1 million, a level that “means that if a million people in an area are continuously exposed to toxic air pollutants over a presumed lifetime of 70 years, there would likely be at least one case of cancer on top of those from other risks people already face,” ProPublica reported.
But the highest risk level the agency considers acceptable is 100 times lower, one in 10,000. Experts told ProPublica that level is too high and “essentially arbitrary.”
ProPublica estimated that over 6,000 Pascagoulans live in what they termed a “hot spot,” where multiple grid squares have a possible excess cancer risk higher than one in 100,000.
Pascagoula resident has sounded the alarm
Pascagoula resident Barbara Weckesser has spent years begging for help for her neighborhood, which sits right next to VT Halter Marine and within a mile of other industrial facilities. The organization she’s a part of, Cherokee Concerned Citizens, wants neighbors to get bought out so they can leave and escape the dust, noise and strange odors she says are a part of life.
“I’m a prisoner in my own home,” she said.
In just the few blocks near her house, she said, there are 11 households in which someone has died of cancer.
Weckesser said she was not at all surprised by the results of ProPublica’s analysis.
Her requests for help from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the city and the county have all been essentially ignored, she said.
“Industry seems to be the only one that matters,” she said. “It doesn’t matter about the citizens that’s dying out here, or who is sick.”
The Sun Herald reached out to facilities in Mississippi for comment. Chevron did not answer specific questions but provided a statement saying that it “continues to take actions to reduce emissions to protect the community and its workers.”
“For example, in 2015, Chevron implemented a fenceline monitoring program around our Pascagoula, Mississippi refinery to identify potential sources of benzene emissions,” the statement read. “As part of this program, the refinery has implemented improvements to reduce those emissions. The Pascagoula refinery is currently below the benzene emissions level where applicable regulations would require further action.”
Benzene can cause leukemia.
Emissions by Chevron include chromium compounds, cobalt compounds and nine other carcinogens in addition to benzene.
Other hot spots in South Mississippi
ProPublica’s analysis also found hot spots in Lucedale and Laurel.
In Lucedale, it found 570 people live in an area with average excess cancer risk of 1 in 22,000. In the highest-risk section, the excess risk was 1 in 2,300, due to emissions from American Tank & Vessel, which builds steel containers.
In Laurel, 23,000 people live in a hot spot around Essmueller Co. and Howard Industries, with average risk of 1 in 22,000. But the highest risk level, in the area where both facilities are located, is 1 in 260, 39 times higher than the level the EPA considers acceptable.
A little further out from the industrial facilities, the risk is five times higher than the EPA standard.
Essmueller makes products like grain elevators while Howard Industries manufactures medical, technology and power equipment like transformers.
Neither company responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The Sun Herald reached out to every industrial facility in this article for comment. It will be updated with responses.
