Elected officials drag feet on new EPA report as news of chemical exposure trickles out to residents
It’s been 15 years since Marcia Llewellyn left Norco, a community located next to an industrial complex long known for its distinctive odor, and a place that many residents said had become too polluted to live in.
“That’s what I always remember about it — the smell,” Llewellyn said as she stood inside her home on Union Street in Montz, a sleepy town along River Road on the east bank of St. Charles Parish. “You know the chemicals from the plants there had to be very strong, with a smell like that.”
This month, Llewellyn was shocked to discover her dead-end street in the quiet neighborhood she calls home might carry even more significant health risks.
According to a recent report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, residents in her census tract face the highest risk of breast or lymphoid cancers of anyplace in the country because of emissions of the carcinogen ethylene oxide. The chemical is produced in large amounts at the Union Carbide Corp. plant across the Mississippi River in Taft.
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