After Decades Of Air Pollution, A Louisiana Town Rebels Against A Chemical Giant

“Robert Taylor isn’t sure why he’s alive.
“My mother succumbed to bone cancer. My brother had lung cancer,” he ticks them off on his fingers. “My sister, I think it was cervical cancer. My nephew lung cancer.” A favorite cousin. That cousin’s son. Both neighbors on one side, one neighbor on the other. “And here I am. I don’t understand how it decides who to take.”
For decades, Taylor and his neighbors wondered if emissions from the plant were making people in the community sick, but most people thought that challenging a chemical giant was a lost cause. The company was rich, the people were poor.