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Jefferson County industries released about 2.9 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil last year, according to new annual data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory.
The inventory showed a slight decline in pounds released compared to last year’s totals, marking gradual progress by companies and regulators in reducing harmful emissions.
Still, there are glaring inequities of who bears the burden of pollution in Louisville.
The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory tracks the emissions of hundreds of different chemicals and dozens of Jefferson County facilities. The emissions are self-reported by facilities, and not all facilities are mandated to report, making it an imperfect measure of the area’s total toxic pollution.
However, the TRI remains one of the best publicly available tools for tracking local toxic emissions. And year after year, the inventory shows emissions of cancer-causing and neurotoxic chemicals disproportionately burdening low-income communities and communities of color in Louisville’s south and west sides.
And despite recent progress, the inventory also shows how a handful of companies are responsible for a majority of Louisville’s toxic emissions into local air, water and soil.
“We have a long way to go,” said Charlie Zhang, a University of Louisville professor whose research involves geographic analysis of Louisville’s toxic emissions.
Explore this searchable database for the complete 2022 inventory for Jefferson County:
Tracking Louisville’s toxic pollution trends
Overall, Louisville saw improvement in the amounts of toxic chemicals entering local air, water and soil last year — and as a general trend over the last decade.
That’s come as a result of increased regulation, advances in emission-control technology and other market forces, said Rachael Hamilton, director of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District.
Pressure for some of those changes has been tirelessly applied over the decades by local community organizers, including members of Rubbertown Emergency ACTion (REACT) and the West Jefferson County Community Task Force.
A significant portion of the overall decline in emissions over the past decade comes from reductions at LG&E’s Mill Creek coal-fired power plant, and from the retirement of coal-fired generation at the Cane Run plant.
At Mill Creek, since 2012, the utility reports spending nearly $1.5 billion to comply with various pollution regulations. A state Public Service Commission order issued earlier this month will likely mean more emission reductions soon at the site, with LG&E approved to retire two aging coal-fired units.
Other facilities have made improvements, too. Chemours, a Rubbertown producer of refrigerants, has brought down emissions of HCFC-22, a potent greenhouse gas. New emission controls at the plant will continue to reduce emissions of HCFC-22 and its byproduct, HFC-23, another powerful greenhouse gas, according to a spokesperson for the company.
Hamilton, with APCD, said these changes were driven by the American Innovation in Manufacturing Act, which directs the EPA’s regulation and phasing down of the HFC group of chemicals.
But when historical emissions have been so exceedingly high, even significant reductions in toxic air emissions on paper can be insufficient, said Eboni Cochran, co-director of REACT and a longtime environmental justice advocate in Louisville’s fenceline communities.
She looks at emissions of chemicals like toluene as an example.
“It’s a teratogen,” Cochran said. “It affects the fetus, so I’m always interested to see who’s releasing it.”
American Synthetic Rubber Co., Louisville’s biggest emitter of toluene, has significantly decreased its releases compared to a decade ago. Still, in 2022 alone, the Rubbertown facility reported releasing nearly 220,000 pounds of the chemical into the air.
The Courier Journal asked tiremaker Michelin, the facility’s parent company, if it has any specific plans in place to continue reducing emissions of harmful chemicals like toluene in Louisville.
“Michelin is committed to safe and sustainable operations,” spokesperson Megan Bagwell said in an email. “We continuously invest and optimize our operating practices to improve Rubbertown Air quality.”
What chemicals are going into Louisville’s air?
Despite reductions, LG&E’s Mill Creek plant reported more air emissions to the TRI than any other facility in the county, though that could change as Mill Creek’s energy mix shifts further from coal.
Sulfuric acid from Mill Creek, HCFC-22 from Chemours, ammonia from catalyst producer Clariant’s Crittenden Drive facility, and toluene from American Synthetic Rubber Co. were among the top air emissions last year by pounds.
Other emissions, like heavy metals emitted from Clariant’s facility on 12th Street, came in smaller quantities, but carried a greater risk to residents, as weighed by the EPA’s toxicity metric. The air pollution control district granted a permit earlier this year allowing the facility to increase emissions, slightly increasing nearby cancer risk, despite public outcry and hundreds of submitted comments to regulators.
“We recognize the environmental impact of our operations and remain committed to substantial improvements,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to The Courier Journal on its toxic releases. “Our company is consistently investing in newer, state-of-the-art technologies and equipment to capture emissions and enhance sustainability.”
APCD said the facility is compliant with current regulations, including those related to lifetime cancer risk.
Interpreting the whole picture of Louisville-area toxic emissions together gets complicated. These emissions are regulated individually, but Cochran wants to see more consideration of how the combination of different chemical emissions works against residents’ health.
Some neighborhoods in the West End, so-called “sacrifice zones” abutting the corridor of chemical plants known as Rubbertown, have higher estimated rates of heart disease than 97% of communities nationally. For asthma, they’re in the 99th percentile.
“We want people to start getting serious about cumulative impacts, and stop acting like these chemicals are acting individually on our body systems,” Cochran said. “Even one of these chemicals, individually, could wreak havoc on our body system.”
What chemicals are going into Louisville’s waterways?
Industries in Jefferson County discharged more than 100,000 pounds of TRI-listed chemicals into local waterways last year.
Nitrate compounds from the Mill Creek power plant, as well as toxins like methanol and formaldehyde from Bakelite Synthetics, were among the top pollutants discharged. Those two companies alone made up about 94% of total TRI-reported emissions into local waterways.
“As part of our commitment to sustainability, we will continue to evaluate our processes and operations for opportunities to further create a more sustainable future — especially as it relates to water consumption and effluent management,” said Bakelite spokesperson John Branham in a statement.
Nitrates can contribute to algal blooms downstream, harming aquatic life. The “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico measured at about 3,000 square miles this year.
Exposure to methanol is associated with an array of health effects, including organ damage. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen.
Work toward environmental justice in Louisville
Black communities’ proximity to the toxic emissions documented in the TRI is not a coincidence, but rather a product of systemic injustices and policies designed to prevent Black residents from building wealth or securing stable housing.
Redlining, “the practice of denying loans in certain neighborhoods because of socioeconomic characteristics,” according to a research project on the subject by Joshua Poe, made a “residential apartheid,” of Black neighborhoods, including those that still border chemical facilities today.
“If you overlay the redlining boundaries with the contemporary pollution map,” Zhang said, “they are still highly correlated.”
Vulnerability to toxic pollution in these communities is compounded, Zhang said, by other disadvantages, including inadequate access to health care or healthy foods. Louisville’s 2017 Health Equity Report found life expectancies in the West End are nearly a decade shorter than areas to the east.
Air Justice, a project of the Environmental Health Literacy Coalition, surveyed nearly 2,000 Louisville residents, mostly in the West End, and found that 98% were concerned about air pollution in some capacity. But issues of health care and safety came first, and the jargon around air quality posed a potential barrier to community involvement.
“Our assessment found that Air Pollution Control District notices are written at a Ph.D. or Master’s reading level, even though the average American adult understands science at a middle-school reading level,” according to the coalition’s summary of findings.
New federal funding could help Louisville residents better understand local air toxics. In November, APCD announced $1 million in EPA funding would go toward extensive air monitoring in the West End and around Rubbertown, involving local partners like the West Jefferson County Community Task Force and Park DuValle Community Health Centers.
In 2005, findings from a similar air toxics-monitoring endeavor led to the creation of Louisville’s Strategic Toxic Air Reduction program, which sets a higher regulatory standard for the city’s major chemical polluters compared to existing EPA regulations.
Connor Giffin is an environmental reporter for The Courier Journal and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. The program funds up to half of corps members’ salaries, but requires a portion also be raised through local community fundraising. To support local environmental reporting in Kentucky, tax-deductible donations can be made atcourier-journal.com/RFA.
Learn more about RFA atreportforamerica.org. Reach Connor directly at cgiffin@gannett.com or on social media @byconnorgiffin.
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