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“Since asthma surveillance data were not available at the census tract level for most of Louisiana, we estimated asthma burden using the inpatient discharge data available through LDH.”  (4)

“Case counts are not provided for CTs with a 2018 population of less than 800 to safeguard privacy.” (4)

“To minimize the need for suppression, inpatient discharge data was aggregated for the three most recent years available (2017–2019) and average annual crude rates were calculated for cases where asthma (ICD-10 code J45) was the primary diagnosis, as well as where asthma was any diagnosis.” (4)

“Spearman’s Rank Correlation was utilized to analyze the correlation between various social and environmental vulnerability factors, COVID-19 incidence, and the measures of asthma risk by CT.” (4)

“This was performed by first ranking the values in each dataset using RANK.AVG function in MS Excel 2016, followed by applying the PEARSON function to compare two datasets. Significance was set at alpha less than 0.05 (α < 0.05), with degrees of freedom (df) equal to two less than the total number of data points represented in both datasets” (4)

The research team works for the Section of Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology, Office of Public Health, Louisiana Department of Health in Baton Rouge. Team members included Arundhati Bakshi; Shanon Soileau; Collete Stewart; Kate Friedman; Collete Maser; Alexis Williams; Kathleen Aubin; and Alicia Van Doren. 

“Currently, much of the environmental focus of the pandemic remains on PM2.5 levels; however, we noted that higher levels of ozone was consistently associated with higher incidence rates of COVID-19, and it was the only environmental factor that appeared to have an additive effect over SVI on COVID-19 incidence (Fig 1).” (11)

“Specifically, our data show a moderately strong positive correlation between SVI due to minority status/language barrier and three health data variables: asthma hospitalization; estimated asthma prevalence; and cumulative COVID-19 incidence at 3 months (Table 2). Interestingly, SVI measures were either negatively or not significantly correlated COVID-19 incidence at the 9-and 12-month time points, indicating that social vulnerability factors may have played a greater role in COVID-19 spread early in the pandemic, but may have been of diminishing importance as the pandemic wore on (Fig 1 and Table 2).” (9)

Bakshi A, Van Doren A, Maser C, Aubin K, Stewart C, Soileau S, et al. (2022) Identifying Louisiana communities at the crossroads of environmental and social vulnerability, COVID-19, and asthma. PLoS ONE 17(2): e0264336. https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264336. 

This document uses data resources from the Center for Disease Control/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC/ATSDR), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH).

These data resources include the Social Vulnerability Index (2018 - CDC/ATSDR), the NATA Respiratory Hazard Index (EPA 2014), PM2.5level (average annual concentration in ug/m3, EPA 2016), ozone level (summer seasonal average of daily maximum 8-hour concentration in air in parts per billion, EPA 2016), indoor mold concerns reported to IEQES program (average annual number of calls, LDH 2017-2019), cumulative COVID-19 incidence rate at 3-, 6-, 9- and 12-month increments (LDH March 2020 - March 2021), asthma hospitalization (average annual crude rate, where asthma was a primary diagnosis among hospitalization cases, LDH 2017-2019), and estimated asthma prevalence (average annual crude rate, where asthma was any diagnosis among hospitalization cases, LDH 2017-2019).

Zoning – Percent of Watershed Area
Commercial – 12.7%
Educational - 0.0%
Hospital – 1.3%
Industrial – 45.8%
Office – 1.3%
Open Space – 7.4%
Residential Detached 1.6%
Residential High Density Row House - 20.1%
Residential Mixed Use -1.7%
Residential Multifamily – 0.2%
Residential Low Density Row House – 3.7%
Residential Traditional – 1.1%
No Data – 3%

Land Use Type - % Watershed Area 

Barren Land - 2.4% 
Commercial -7.0% 
Forest - 1.9% 
High Density Residential - 25.9% 
Medium Density Residential - 1.4% 
Low Density Residential - 0% 
Industrial - 42.0% 
Institutional - 7.4% 
Other Developed Land -7.8% 
Transportation - 3.0% 
Wetland - 0% 
Water -1.3% 

Property Ownership – Percent of Watershed Area

City Owned – 12.8%
Private – 37.3%
Right of Way – 23.1%
Rail Roads – 25.4%
State Owned – 2.2%
Federal Owned – 0.5%

Most of the citizen-produced data is discounted by officials. There is little authorized data, though data has been collected and can be found with some effort. Dissemination of information is on a grassroots level. PRPs have been engaged in misinformation campaigns as well, creating organizations with misleading names who advertise on the radio and distribute flyers. 

Monitoring. Decisions from the EPA about 'safe' levels of radiation exposure. 

Cancer cluster. Not racialized in this particular area so much as class-based. Bridgeton is a working-class, mostly white suburb. The neighborhood closest to the landfill is a mobile home park. 

Dualistic attitude of humanity as separate from nature led us to believe that we can dump nuclear waste in a floodplain and it will not affect us. Refusal to trust in ecological processes, hubris of engineering, and faith that we are not subject to natural laws because we are above nature led us to use the land in this way. Ecosystems compromised are innumberable because of the nature of the site--its proximity to water and the porous nature of the karst beneath it. This is still not recognized as a fundamental issue as evidenced by the fact that our solutions to these problems are always based on engineering, attempting to outsmart geography, geology, and physics...never a long-term solution or re-thinking land use practices. 

I think the public imagination hasn't arrived at this juncture yet. Priority=removal of hazardous waste. Some academics are imagining futures (the landscape architecture students and professors at Washington University for example). Discursive histories in use= culture of nature. Wildlife preserves on land unfit for habitation. 

None so far. But its future could be much like Weldon Spring's. DOE educators providing AEC-driven education.