Louisiana communities are left in the dark on toxic air – and industry helped keep it that way

Smoke billows from a chemical plant in Louisiana. Photograph: Giles Clarke/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Smoke billows from a chemical plant in Louisiana. Photograph: Giles Clarke/Getty Images Louisiana communities are left in the dark on toxic air – and industry helped keep it that way Lawmakers weakened community air monitoring as industry pushed back against greater scrutiny K imbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St Rose, in south-eastern Louisiana . Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3am and fled to an all-night Ihop. In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group. But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how that kind of data could be used. So she stopped. “I shut my mouth like they wanted me to,” Kyereh said. View image in fullscreen Kimbrelle Kyereh, left, with her father, Alphonse Eugene. Kyereh lives so close to chemical storage tanks in St Rose that the fumes bring headaches and sometimes wake her. Photograph: Akasha Rabut/Floodlight Along the 85-mile corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans – where cancer rates from toxic air pollution are among the nation’s highest – many residents live in the shadows of heavy industry with no idea what they’re breathing. A Floodlight/Guardian analysis found that Louisiana’s public air monitors are often located miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals. Our analysis identified the state’s top 25 industrial air polluters using emissions data that companies self-report to the EPA. Then we used state data to calculate each plant’s distance to the nearest public air monitoring station – and to determine which pollutants those monitors actually test for. We found: Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities, based on self-reported data shared with the EPA, operate without a single public air monitor within five miles. This list includes Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine, which is about eight miles from the nearest air monitoring station. The station measures only ozone even though the plant releases an array of toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen. No public monitors measure ammonia – despite the fact that CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant emits more than 7m lbs of the hazardous chemical each year, according to EPA data. The three chemicals that researchers have concluded “together account for the large majority of total cancer risk ” in the area – ethylene oxide, chloroprene and formaldehyde – aren’t monitored by the state at all. Industry groups have spent years fighting proposals that would require better monitoring around manufacturing plants. They also helped draft a 2024 law that sharply restricted how community air