Dying In The Shadow Of Industry

Dying In The Shadow Of Industry

Growing Up Near Chemical Row

I grew up in south Louisiana and southern east Texas, which topographically resembles southern Louisiana more than any of the rest of the state. We’re talking Bayous, mosquitos, and crawfish boils.

But there is something else it has in common with southern Louisiana, tons of chemical refineries. These things fill the air with the foulest smells you’ll ever smell, acrid smells that often stick in your mouth and throat.

My grandfather and many others from the area would say that it “Smells like money!”. That’s all well and good if you work in one of these places and make a decent living. At least as a unionized real employee of the plant, not as some contractor that gets paid less than half the hourly wage and no benefits, anyways.

But what about the rest of us? Well, we just get to live in the shadow of the burning smoke stacks, venting off benzene and every other horrid thing that the EPA puts a “safe limit” on, knowing damn well there is no safe limit for a human to breathe that shit into their bodies. Knowing that the plants will often go well over those limits because it’s more profitable to risk doing so and possibly get caught than to limit their production or take more safety measures.