Sugar plantations, Chemical Plants, COVID-19
The chemical plants in Cancer Alley are built where there once were sugar plantations. Descendants of enslaved communities still live nearby.
The chemical plants in Cancer Alley are built where there once were sugar plantations. Descendants of enslaved communities still live nearby.
The incident first happened on April 4th, 2016 by a large amount of unnatural dead sea fish washed up on the Vung Ang seashore (Ha Tinh province) near the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel plant.
Image by Justice for Formosa Victims, 2019.
Join us for the Disaster STS Network’s Fall 2021 virtual tour of Louisiana's Cancer Alley, a corridor of chemical plants along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with shockin
The report comes within a much larger book edited by Richard Hindmarsh focused on the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The book as whole explores social, environmental, and political issues in the aftermath of the incident. It appears to be available at multiple collegiate libraries including Boston College, Williams College, Harvard University, MIT, and Cornell University.
BSVAC was founded during the height of the crack-cocaine epidemic, when gang and drug violence were rampant throughout the city. While violence has decreased in Bed-Struy, felony assaults as of 2013 stood at around 5.9/1000, well over double the NY city-wide rate of 2.4/1000. This is an area rife with poverty, with median income of about $19,000 and a population heavily dominated by non-white individuals (latino, african-american, multi-race, ect.). Hence, the organization has been heavily molded by this urban, highly volatile environment. The vast majority of BSVAC personnel are of color and outreach is primarily aimed at keeping non-white youth away from street or drug life. The heavy emphasis on gun and drug violence in the area shapes the call volume and type, with shooting and stabbing wounds being a regular occurrence. The agency, for the most part, is a trauma-based service. Thus, their responses to calls would be different than an ambulance without this lengthy history and experience. Moreover, BSVAC has played a role in volunteering and responding to large-scale disasters, such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Haiti. As members are highly experienced in high volumes of large traumatic injuries, they are well-equipped to handle larger emergencies (similar to the ER physicians in County Hospital of LA or the trauma surgeons in Cook County outside Chicago).