This is a pretty typical growth pattern. Industrial zone establishes and city is set far away in a safe area. City expands and resident need cheap housing. The cheap housing is built near the industrial zone as that is how economic forces work. People then see this and say they built industrial next to the poor people when the opposite occurred. Now the industry is giving cancer to poor people and needs to be punished. Who is right and who is wrong?
The map itself:<p><a href="https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/" rel="nofollow">https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/</a>
Some anecdotes as someone who lived near one of these locations growing up (fortunately about 30 mi away)<p>1) Every now and then, our entire town would smell terrible, presumably from the winds carrying the emissions to us<p>2) A friend who moved here during my high school had to move away since his whole family suffered from asthma and it was made much noticeably worse here<p>3) Heard a couple huge explosions during my lifetime from these refineries sadly.
As I've said for years, any time you see a glittering urban core full of glass towers, steel bridges, and classic old stone architecture, somewhere there's a Mordor nearby that made all that happen.
Jesus, this story is going to have all the bad takes. People's main takeaway from the article is, "it's just the way cities grow," "it's the zoning board's fault," "people moved near a cancer cluster, it's their fault," "you should be able to pollute an area you pay for."<p>Seriously? The problem is the government allowing private corporations to poison the environment to benefit the bottom line of the corporations. I don't care if someone moved next door to an industrial plant or a pig farm, if they are spewing toxins into the air we breathe, the water we drink, the ground someone else will eventually purchase, they are responsible for damaging the environment as well as harming, and in the long run, killing people and that should absolutely be illegal and stopped. We're not talking about a bad smell or loud noise, we're talking about people getting leukemia or Parkinson's and so on. Are you sociopaths?
Read up on the Love Canal disaster.<p>- Company buries toxic waste in 1920’s in drums that corrode<p>- Another company buys property, is aware of buried drums<p>- City seeks to buy property after company shuts down<p>- Company tells city there is toxic waste. City acknowledges.<p>- City talks about building on the dump site. City reminds city of toxic waste.<p>- Company finally sells land, <i>makes city sign acknowledgment of toxic waste dump</i><p>- City then expands building school and new housing toxic waste dump<p>- People get sick, company gets sued
"Before there was climate denial, there was cancer denial."<p>Cancer is just a risk. Having a job an earning money will always outweigh that risk. People will put up with a lot of crummy environment to put food on the table.
Before the emissions control feeding frenzy begins, let's try to remember that further regulation without industry input contributes to further inflation & moves more polluting production overseas where we have no control over its impact on the world.<p>Yes, we should aim for zero emissions. Yes, the health impacts carry their own costs not to mention the human tragedy. However, good public policy is about rewarding good behavior (eg. tax credits) and punishing bad behavior (eg. tax, enforcement, penalties). Everyone loves to talk about the latter, while the former is ignored.<p>We really need to be long-term smart about how we craft environmental policy in America, and particularly so given other countries unwillingness to manage pollution in an effective or transparent manner.