Are local chemical releases causing an increase in cancer rates in East Baton Rouge Parish?

Abstract

Environmental pollution has become a steadily growing problem in today’s society. East Baton Rouge alone has 13 chemical plants in the parish. The goal of this research is to find out if the chemical releases in the parish are having an effect on the cancer rates in East Baton Rouge Parish. I gathered data from all 64 parishes in Louisiana. The four chemicals I chose to study specifically, Benzene, Dioxin, Formaldehyde, and Xylene. Chemical release data was taken from the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) website and software from the years1988 to 2009, which was the last reporting year. The cancers I chose to study were Nasopharynx, Non Hodgkin Lymphoma, Leukemia, Lung and bronchus Cancer, and Soft Tissue Sarcomas. The cancer data was taken from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program’s software called SEERStat. Those data range from 1995 to 2009. I estimated a time lag of 10 years. Stata was used for the statistical analysis. I found that there is evidence that the chemical releases across the state have an effect on the cancer rates especially dioxin and formaldehyde. There were not enough cancer observations in East Baton Rouge parish to perform the analysis by parish and statistically say that chemicals in East Baton Rouge parish are having an effect on the cancer rates.