DeSmog
From Pollution to the Pandemic, Racial Equity Eludes Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Community
Higher rates of COVID-19 infection and death have been found in people living in a stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge lined with over a hundred refineries and petrochemical plants.
Mary Hampton, president of the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, a community group in Louisiana fighting for clean air, opted to do everything in her power to avoid getting the coronavirus after Robert Taylor, the group’s founder, was hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this year. So she got vaccinated as soon as she could. “Either the vaccine is going to make me sick,” Hampton reasoned, “or the virus is going to kill me.”