Analyze

Facing a pivotal federal investigation into Louisiana’s relationship with petro-chemical companies, the state’s attorney general hired lawyers who were simultaneously representing one of the main corporations at the center of the investigation, documents reveal.

The revelations, contained in documents released under public records requests, have led to allegations of a major conflict of interest and come just weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] dropped its civil rights investigation.

Internal emails, contracts and payments, show that the office of the attorney general, Jeff Landry, hired two lawyers to enter closed-door negotiations with the EPA during the 14-month civil rights investigation. But John King and Tim Hardy were also representing the Taiwanese chemicals firm Formosa in separate litigation, challenging a decision to revoke the company’s state air permits. (Moran and Sneath 2023).

In the 1980s, Formosa Plastics Corporation purchased financially struggling petrochemical plants in Delaware, Texas, and Louisiana. The company subsequently shifted its operations to Texas and Louisiana, where a competitive bidding process ensued between the two states, both of which were known for industry-friendly policies (Tubilewicz 2021). As political scientist Tubilewicz (2021, 16) has argued, the politics surrounding Formosa's investments in these states were not purely motivated by profit but were also shaped by the ongoing struggles of sub-state actors such as politicians and NGOs over issues of internationalization and representation in global affairs.

An example of this can be seen in Formosa's attempt to build a rayon fiber plant in Louisiana's St. John Parish in the late 1990s, an area also known as "Cancer Alley." Protests broke out due to concerns about massive tax exemptions, displacement of Black residents, and the plant's location on the historic Whitney Plantation (Tubilewicz 2021, 11). However, the project was eventually abandoned due to declining market demand and delays. In addition, the local St. John Governor was indicted for illegal industrial rezoning of land around the plantation and receiving $200,000 in real estate commission (Tubilewicz 2021, 11).

• Flame retardant chemicals
• Migrate off of products and into air/dust
• Many are endocrine disruptors, interfere with the reproductive system and thyroid
• Stain repellent chemicals
• Polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs) or polyfluorinated chemicals (PFCs)
• Enter air, dust, and drinking water
• 6 million US residents have blood PFAS concentrations over EPA limit
• Associated with cancer, thyroid disease, immunotoxicity, reduced immune response to childhood immunizations
• Phthalates
• Enter air and dust
• Associated with asthma and allergies
• Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)
• Environmentally persistent pollutant, endocrine disruptor, and probable carcinogen
• No longer used, but remain in estimated 25,000 US schools
• Prenatal exposure may affect height, weight, head circumference, and body size at puberty

The authors structure their argument around three metrics: student health, student thinking, and student performance. They define these as follows:

• Student health: the overall physical and biological health of a school building occupant.
• Student thinking: short-term impacts on cognitive function and mental well-being.
• Student performance: the successful long-term academic performance of students.

Through their review of more than 200 studies, they conclude that there is unambiguous evidence for negative effects of low environmental quality on all three of these metrics. Although it is discussed in less detail, they also reference studies that provide evidence for the improvement of these three metrics when issues with school infrastructure are addressed.

"Millions of K–12 students in America spend several hours a day learning in schools that are more than 50 years old and in need of extensive repair and where children may be exposed to mold, poor ventilation, uncomfortable temperatures, inadequate lighting, and overcrowded, excessively noisy conditions."

Emphasizes the scale of the issue--this is not a Philadelphia or Santa Ana or Azusa problem, it is a national issue for all public schools. Also emphasizes the breadth of the issues--there are so many different forms of environmental hazards in schools.

• Ventilation & air quality:
• Children breathe more air than adults relative to their body size
• Water quality:
• Contaminants like lead have greater effects on cognitive development and behavior of children than adults
• Thermal comfort
• Current models for thermal comfort are based on adults and do not predict children's comfort levels
• Children are more susceptible to the effects of heat stress
• Children's clothing and activity levels (major determinants of thermal comfort) are distinct from adults
• Lighting and views
• Children have larger pupils than adults
• Children have greater light-induced melatonin suppression--their Circadian rhythms are more susceptible to manipulation
• Noise
• Children under 15 are more sensitive to difficult listening conditions because they are still developing mature language skills
• Children need a greater signal-to-noise ratio in order to understand language
• Memory and attention development are sensitive to chronic noise exposure

"We recognize that beyond the four walls of the school building there are many environmental and social contexts that can adversely affect students’ well-being and undermine their academic potential. Inequities persist in the distribution of the social determinants of health, and students bring these influence with them every day when they walk through the doors of their school building."

Environmental injustice can't be an either/or issue of hazards inside or outside schools, it needs to be a both/and issue where hazards in schools are being addressed in conjunction with hazards outside of schools.

"The chronic impacts of a poor school environment often do not get the same type of attention as cases like these, because the links between building quality and health are subtler and less overt."

"These" is referring to a list of dramatic incidents where students were suddenly exposed to some kind of environmental hazard. This quote captures one of the biggest challenges of environmental justice work--in the many, many cases where it is not visible, it is hard to mobilize support, attention, and emotion because the links aren't flashy. This connects to ideas about slow disasters in Anthro 25A.

• Ventilation:
• 15 cubic feet of outside air per person or 5 liters per person per second
• Carbon dioxide concentrations below 1000 ppm
• Water quality:
• No amount of lead is safe
• National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWR)
• Thermal health
• Indoor temperatures between 68 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit
• Lighting
• Minimum 350 lux, up to 1000 lux
• LED instead of fluorescent lighting
• Noise
• Maximum background noise: 35 dB
• Maximum reverbration time: 0.6-0.7 seconds

• Public schools are the second largest sector of US public infrastructure spending (after highways) - investment falls $46 billion short annually
• 60,000 schools, or 46% of public schools, have significant environmental hazards
• Students will spend 15,600 hours inside a school during K-12 education
• Schools are four times as densely populated as offices
• Childhood asthma accoutns for 13.8 million missed school days each year
• 31% of schools use portable classrooms
• Average school building in the US has a lifespan of 50 years, many are older than this