A southeast Louisiana school board voted on Thursday to shut down a predominantly Black elementary school adjacent to a petrochemical facility embroiled in multiple lawsuits linked to its high levels of toxic emissions.
Denka Performance Elastomer LLC produces the synthetic rubber neoprene used for wetsuits, laptop sleeves and other common products. The facility emits the likely carcinogen chloroprene at such high concentrations that it exposes the surrounding majority Black community to an unacceptable cancer risk , according to a 2023 federal complaint brought against Denka on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA warned that the several hundred students who attend 5th Ward Elementary, about a quarter mile 0.40 kilometers from Denka's facility, are among those who face heightened cancer risk.
Air monitoring consistently shows long-term chloroprene concentrations in the air surrounding Denka's facility as high as 15 times the levels recommended for lifetime exposure, the federal complaint said. The EPA states that Denka's chloroprene emissions are the reason why the surrounding communities in St. John the Baptist Parish have the highest estimated cancer risks nationwide.
The Biden administration has invested billions in the EPA to address environmental justice issues and put Denka front and center of its efforts to hold industrial polluters accountable for their impacts on minority neighborhoods . Many of these fence line communities are located along a heavily industrialized 85-mile 137-kilometer stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge officially called the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor and commonly referred to by environmental groups as "Cancer Alley."
