Cancer Alley

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Cancer Alley is the regional nickname given to an 184-mile (296 km) stretch of land along the Mississippi River between the Baton Rouge metropolitan area and the Gulf of Mexico, in the River Parishes of Louisiana, which contains over 350 industrial facilities that emit significant amounts of air pollution. Cancer Alley houses the largest concentration of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants and refineries in the Western Hemisphere. As of 2025, this area accounted for 25% of the petrochemical production in the United States. Environmentalists consider the region a sacrifice zone, which is an area where pollution levels are so significant that they pose considerable dangers to the people who live there, and these people are often marginalized and under-resourced. The pollution generated by the high density of petrochemical facilities in Cancer Alley has resulted in a local risk of cancer that is 47 times greater than the acceptable threshold set by the U.S. government. The extent of the...

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