Threshold

We’ve been telling the story of the petrochemical industry in Louisiana, but this isn’t just a Louisiana issue, or even just an American one - petrochemicals are a global industry with a global impact. In this episode, we think about our collective future, and how we might begin to navigate living with all this plastic.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

For decades, the residents of St. John the Baptist Parish breathed in toxic chemicals from a massive complex that makes neoprene - a synthetic rubber. But while residents suspected something was wrong, they were still shocked when the EPA told them they had the highest risk of cancer in the nation. Why were they just now being warned? And what was the government going to do about it? In this episode, we follow one community’s search for justice.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

People have objected to the toxic side effects of industry in Louisiana and across the country for a long time. A swell of activism in the 70s and 80s connected civil rights with environmental issues and public health, so that by the 1990s, it seemed like the nation was entering an environmental justice renaissance. And yet, low income and minority communities have remained at risk. In this episode, we follow the history of environmental justice activism and how the corridor became a poster child for unevenly distributed pollution.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

We know that many of the chemicals being released by plants in the corridor can cause cancer. We also know that the cancer risk along this stretch of the Mississippi is unusually high. But how do we know for sure that these things are connected? In this episode, we explore what we know about pollution and disease.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the corridor began a transition from one deadly industry to another—from sugar to petrochemicals. This transition wasn’t a coincidence. The history of industry intersects with the history of race in Louisiana all the way up to the present day. In this episode, we look at how and why petrochemicals came to the corridor.
Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced. You can support Threshold by donating today. To stay connected, sign up for our newsletter.