Cancer Alley 2

A woman poses for a photo holding her son

Kaitlyn Joshua with her daughter, Lauryn, age 5, outside their home in Geismar, Ascension Parish, in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. Joshua, a chronic asthma sufferer since childhood, said her physician told her, “Kaitlyn, it’s where you live. It’s the air quality. You’re going to have to move out of there.” October 20, 2023. © 2023 Eli Reed for Human Rights Watch

Jo and Joy Banner, twins and co-founders of the Descendants Project, a non-profit environmental justice organization, at their home in the historic Black community of Wallace on the last remaining 11 miles on the Mississippi River in St. John Parish free of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants. They are organizing to keep it that way. October 17, 2023. © 2023 Eli Reed for Human Rights Watch

Smoke and flares from an industrial plant seen over a body of water

Janice Ferchaud, a breast cancer survivor, at her home in St. James Parish, in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. She attributes her cancer and the illness and death of family and neighbors to the pollution from the approximately 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical plants that line Cancer Alley. October 17, 2023. © 2023 Eli Reed for Human Rights Watch

Flares and smoke released from fossil fuel and petrochemical plants

3 women wearing matching shirts pose for a photo

Myrtle Felton, Gail LeBoeuf, and Barbara Washington of Inclusive. LeBoeuf was diagnosed with liver cancer in January 2023. In Convent, St. James Parish, in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. March 28, 2023. © 2023 Antonia Juhasz/Human Rights Watch

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