Inside America’s ‘human sacrifice zone’ where cancer is killing thousands and locals claim cover-up

Tucked between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Louisiana, you’ll find an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River known locally as ‘Cancer Alley.’

Here, wooden houses are built on reclaimed landfills and contaminated soil, and industrial plants have been erected on top of graveyards. 

Hundreds of factories litter the horizon.

As the morbid moniker suggests, this low-income, predominantly Black area has become a hotspot for malignant tumors in its residents. 

While local officials are aware of the contamination and the damage it’s causing, documents show plans to ramp up industry rather than scale it back. It’s a move that has earned the Louisiana territory a new nickname: human sacrifice zone.

The Daily Mail visited the area to speak with residents.   

Upon our reporter’s return from the short-term stay, she suffered a cough and breathing difficulties doctors said could have been brought on by exposure to toxic chemicals.

Many of the people interviewed were born and raised in the area. They talked to the Mail about what it’s been like to live among the smog and invisible toxins.

Here are their stories of life, death and resistance.

Most of the plants in Cancer Alley produce oil, plastics, gas or chemical products. The various facilities produce chemicals linked to cancer, asthma, respiratory illnesses, miscarriages and early death 

The health risks

Recent studies show Cancer Alley dwellers have a 95 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with cancer than the average American. 

Though, cancer isn’t their only concern. 

One in three pregnancies among women in the area end in miscarriage, which is double the national rate. 

Life expectancy stands at 73.5 years in most parishes across the area – nearly 10 years shorter than the average for developed countries.

Louisiana State University’s LSU Health reports that there were more than 13,400 cancer cases among residents in the 11 affected parishes from 2015 to 2019 – there were 132,127 total cases reported statewide during that same period.

These health conditions aren’t just affecting humans. 

Dr. Beverly Wright, 78, grew up in New Orleans and has worked to raise awareness about the pollution in Cancer Alley for more than 40 years.

She recalled driving from New Orleans to visit her aunts in Baton Rouge when she was a little girl, and said the new buildings and clean air would give way to bumpy roads and pungent ‘horrific’ smelling air full of chemicals once they reached the plagued territory. She remembered the air smelling like rotten eggs.

In the late 1980s, she said, EPA representatives came to the area to catalogue the pollution. She recalls officials pulling frogs with three legs out of the bayou along with fish that had large tumors on their heads.

What’s the cause?

This crisis can likely be traced to the 200-plus gas, plastic and chemical plants built across the area since the 1960s thanks to lucrative tax credits and low levels of regulation.

As a result, more than 50 toxic chemicals can be detected in the air on any given day, some at concentrations up to 1,000 times higher than the EPA considers safe.

A 2024 report by the American Lung Association found that people in the parish are disproportionately affected by the high levels of air pollution. That includes nearly 1,900 residents with cardiovascular disease and more than 1,400 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as of 2024.

Continuing to fund industry

Despite the pollution findings and furious disapproval of locals, documents obtained by the Daily Mail show that plans to build dozens more factories are being considered for approval. 

These plans include a proposed $9.4 billion Formosa Plastics complex – the application for which says it would emit more than 13 million tons of carbon into the air each year.

As such, some doctors have described the area as a ‘human sacrifice zone’, where profits are being prioritized over people’s health.

The community members are speaking out

Nearly every resident the Mail interviewed as part of an investigation had a family member or friend in the area who had been affected by cancer, a miscarriage or an autoimmune condition. 

Dr. Dorothy Nairne, 58, who lives in Assumption Parish about 55 miles south of Baton Rouge, has attended funerals for members of nearly every household in her neighborhood – including her own mother, who passed away from a stomach tumor the size of a soccer ball.

‘It’s heartbreaking,’ she said. ‘It’s like a repeat of the HIV crisis, with so many lives lost.’ 

But even in death, there is no peace. 

Nearby, an oil factory built on top of a graveyard belches black smoke down over the tombstones below.

For most people living in Cancer Alley, leaving isn’t a luxury they can afford. Nearly one fifth of locals live below the poverty line, which is twice the national average. 

It certainly doesn’t help that many residents work in the nearby factories, further increasing their exposure to the toxic chemicals. 

Gail LeBoeuf, 72, had only been retired a few months when she was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in 2021.

She had worked multiple factory jobs around the St. James Parish area for more than four decades, during which time her mother, neighbor and ex-husband all died from cancer.

LeBoeuf now runs a campaign group fighting to get the factories closed down and stop 35 proposed new plants from making the air quality even worse. 

She showed the Mail a photograph of an alleged explosion at the Marathon oil plant in Garyville, a town in St. John the Baptist Parish, with thick black smoke that she said spewed from the site for days.

Gail LeBoeuf in front of an alleged explosion at the Marathon plant in Garyville, Louisiana, in August 2023. She worked in different plants in Cancer Alley for years, and said she was unaware of the health affects associated with industrial pollution

Meanwhile, Dr. Angelle Bradford, 32, grew up in Southern Baton Rouge with her twin sister and little brother. An Exxon Mobil plant sat right beside their backyard.

Dr. Bradford and her siblings developed asthma, headaches and persistent skin rashes, but ‘growing up, you kind of just lived your life,’ she said.

Family members and neighbors developed various cancers, while she and her sister dealt with infertility issues. 

It was only when earning her PhD in cardiovascular physiology that Dr. Bradford said the connection between the factories and the local health issues became impossible to ignore.

Similarly, Cancer Alley resident Robert Taylor didn’t connect the dots between disease and his environment until he was in his eighties. By that point, his wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer and his daughter developed an autoimmune disease.

In 2022, Taylor received a letter from the EPA after its investigation. The letter was to inform him that he was living in an area with dangerous levels of chloroprene toxins.

His daughter, Raven, was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition affecting fewer than 100 people in all of the US and which can cause cognitive impairment, seizures, memory loss and hallucinations. It has left her unable to leave her home.

He tells the Mail he has lost count of how many neighbors and friends have died. 

Taylor established a nonprofit, Concerned Citizens of St. John, fighting new chemical facilities being built in the area and advocating for clean air, soil and water.

Dr. Joy Banner (left) and sister Jo Banner are fighting against the expansion of factories

Shamell Lavigne, 47, grew up in St. James Parish, and she and her family now deal with rashes and chronic sinus infections that make it difficult to breathe. 

She tells the Mail that her neighbors suffer from asthma and both breast and brain cancers, while several of her uncles have prostate cancer and her mother has autoimmune hepatitis.

She blames the chemical-emitting factories for these ailments and for the miscarriage she suffered in 2014. (Lavigne had a history of infertility issues).

She is currently fighting the multibillion-dollar expansion of a Formosa plastic plant less than two miles from her childhood home. 

Watching the health of the community erode over her lifetime, Lavigne’s mother, Sharon, founded Rise St. James in 2018 – another campaign group hoping to stop petrochemical expansion in the territory.

Dangers go beyond pollution

Other residents told the Mail that accidents stemming from these chemical plants are a regular occurrence.

The Banners’ parents worked in factories near their homes. They told the Mail that while their dad was working at a plant producing coating for rockets, chemicals fell on his foot and burned through his flesh.

Dr. Banner said a friend’s tear ducts were seared off when the plant he worked at exploded, adding that another factory explosion caused a career-ending injury for her other friend, a baseball player.

‘I mean, it’s just everyone has in some way, shape or form, [been] impacted by the industry,’ Dr. Banner said. 

‘[Everyone] has paid the price for working in industry or living around industry.’

Roadblocks to recovery

The Banners founded a campaign group and lobbied for stricter rules around air pollution in the parish, which led to the announcement of the 2022 EPA investigation.

But the project, which was supposed to force local Louisiana environmental regulators to create more stringent air quality laws, was suddenly halted without explanation.

Dr. Banner said, ‘After all of that fighting, they just abandoned us.’

SHAMELL LAVIGNE is the chief operating officer at Rise St. James, which is currently fighting against the expansion of a Formosa Plastics vinyl chloride plant

Angelle Bradford grew up in Southern Baton Rouge with her twin sister and little brother. An Exxon Mobil plant sat right outside her backyard

Dr. Dorothy Nairne grew up in Minnesota but returned to her ancestral home in Louisiana in 2015. In Louisiana, she cared for her mother Virginia Tunson Nairne, who passed from cancer in 2021

Robert Taylor has watched neighbors and family members fall sick over his lifetime in Louisiana. This has moved him to fight the expansion of more petrochemical plants 

Raven Taylor was working as a nurse when her stomach paralysis became so severe that she stopped being able to eat or keep food down. An experimental surgery, which implanted a pace maker into her gastrointestinal system, restored some movement to the area