Concerned Citizens of St. John Parish Meet with EPA in Washington, D.C.

Robert Taylor and Mary Hampton outside EPA headquarters in Washington, DC.
*Matt Roth for Earthjustice*

On November 13, 2019, Mary Hampton and Robert Taylor of Concerned Citizens of St. John Parish—a community group on the front lines of the struggle for environmental justice in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”—traveled from Reserve, Louisiana to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) headquarters in Washington, DC. Hampton and Taylor, who both live within a few hundred meters of the Denka Performance Elastomer (Denka, formerly DuPont) neoprene facility in LaPlace, met with EPA scientists and staff from the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program. The purpose of the meeting was for stakeholders, including members of the affected community, advocates, scientists, and attorneys, to oppose Denka’s request for reconsideration of EPA’s Toxicological Review of Chloroprene. The stakeholders had requested the meeting with IRIS scientists in a letter submitted to EPA on August 2, 2019, seeking to provide formal input on the reconsideration process and discuss EPA’s current review of the chloroprene cancer risk value.

Chloroprene is a carcinogen emitted as a by-product in neoprene rubber manufacturing. The Denka facility is the only neoprene manufacturing facility in the country. According to EPA, residents of the Denka census tract face the highest risk in the country of developing cancer from air pollution due to the plant’s chloroprene emissions. A recent report by the University Network of Human Rights, Waiting to Die, documented strikingly high rates of cancer and other chloroprene-associated illnesses among residents living closest to the facility, including children. Residents are also exposed to
carcinogenic ethylene oxide emissions from other facilities in the area.

Whereas representatives from Denka and its hired environmental consulting company Ramboll Group have met with EPA at least four times since 2016, EPA’s IRIS program met affected community members and other stakeholders concerned about chloroprene toxicity for the first time on November 13. In addition to briefing EPA on the disturbing findings of the Waiting to Die report, scientists raised concerns about the EPA’s ongoing review of its chloroprene assessment and defended EPA’s 2010 Toxicological Review of Chloroprene as the best available science for applying emissions limits that protect public health.

During the stakeholder meeting, Concerned Citizens of St. John urged EPA to protect the community by taking the following actions:

1. Deny Denka’s request for reconsideration, which seeks to weaken the chloroprene cancer risk value finalized by EPA’s IRIS program in 2010. There have been no new scientific developments that would warrant weakening or replacing the IRIS value.

2. Continue to administer fenceline monitoring and monitoring around the community, which EPA instituted in 2016 and may reportedly terminate at the end of 2019. EPA monitoring has provided critical information regarding Denka’s chloroprene emissions. As demonstrated by a comparison of air monitoring results disseminated by the longtime community partner, Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), monitor readings show that Denka has not achieved chloroprene air concentrations at or below 0.2 μg/m3. In fact, Denka continues to emit chloroprene at levels 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the presumptively safe limit.

3. Demand that EPA exercise the full extent of its authority to compel Denka to reduce chloroprene emissions to EPA-recommended levels.

“Our community is suffering,” said Concerned Citizens President Mary Hampton. “We’re not asking for anything out of the ordinary—we’re just asking the EPA to do their job and protect us.”

“The EPA determined in 2016 that anything higher than 0.2 [μg/m3 of chloroprene] is unacceptable,” added Concerned Citizens Executive Director Robert Taylor. “That’s what the science says. We need to stick to the science.”

Attachments:

Stakeholder meeting request: Opposition to Denka’s Request for Reconsideration of EPA’s Toxicological Review of Chloroprene (RFC 17002) (August 2, 2019)

A Tale of Two Cities: Toxic Racial Divide, The Intercept (Sharon Lerner), https://theintercept.com/2019/02/24/epa-response-air-pollution-crisis-toxic-racial-divide/

University Network for Human Rights, https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/press/2019/7/30/residents-of-us-cancer-town-diagnosed-at-highly-unusual-rates-study-says

Louisiana Environmental Action Network, comparison of chloroprene fenceline monitoring data from 2016-2018