Please leave this field empty
Donate Monthly Make a Gift Renew Your Membership Ways to Give
Food & Water Watch Food & Water Watch Food & Water Watch
  • About
  • Problems
  • Campaigns
  • Impacts
  • Research
  • Contact
Donate Monthly Make a Gift Renew Your Membership Ways to Give
  • facebook
  • twitter
Please leave this field empty
Food & Water Watch Food & Water Watch
$
Menu
  • About
  • News
  • Research Library
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • Donate
Search
Please leave this field empty
  • facebook
  • twitter

Photo Essay: Playgrounds and Pollution

Alison's Toxic Tour of Houston and its horrifying array of polluting facilities near homes and schools.  Here's what that means for you.

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • google-plus
  • envelope

We all need safe food and clean water.

Donate
Toxics Tour: Pollution and Playgrounds

ExxonMobil's Baytown Complex, as seen from a playground directly across the street.

By Alison Grass
03.14.18

Toxic Tour: Why Houston?

Last week in Houston, Texas I was fortunate enough go on an alarming but thoroughly enlightening “toxic tour” of the Houston Ship Channel, where about a quarter of U.S. petrochemicals are manufactured. The tour, led the local advocacy group Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (t.e.j.a.s.), gave me a very valuable understanding of the ubiquitously hazardous impacts the oil and gas, petrochemical and plastics industries have on the communities that surround their facilities.

Currently, there is a growing global awareness around the problem with plastic. But many people don’t realize that the process of creating plastics is also inherently toxic, reliant on dirty fossil fuels and chemical manufacturing.

The fracking boom and its result -- cheap natural gas -- have spawned a resurgence in plastics manufacturing and the pollution it creates. Specifically, the fracking boom has produced an oversupply of ethane, a hydrocarbon present in certain shale gas reserves. This has been a boon for the plastics industry, which relies on petrochemical manufacturing to turn ethane into plastic.

Transforming ethane into plastics pollutes the environment and imposes public health risks on industry workers and nearby communities. TWEET

But transforming ethane into plastics pollutes the environment and imposes public health risks on industry workers and nearby communities. Plants that convert natural gas into petrochemicals are known to emit massive amounts of air and climate pollutants, including ozone-creating volatile organic compounds (such as benzene and toluene) and nitrogen oxide. 

ExxonMobil's Petrochemical and plastics production facilities in Houston

ExxonMobil in Houston

Seeing The Impact: Playgrounds and Polluting Plants

Our first stop on the tour was a community park, surrounded by homes, directly across the street from ExxonMobil's Baytown Complex. While only there for thirty minutes, some in my group had to cover their faces with their shirts or hands, unable to tolerate the stench coming from the facility. One group member had to flush her eyes in a bathroom sink because of the irritating emissions. 

On a later stop in the Manchester/Harrisburg neighborhood, I was shocked to see that Valero's refinery (which is one of sixteen chemical plants within a 3-mile radius of the community) -- with its colossal emissions plumes -- is literally in the backyard of homes, and less than two miles from schools. Just this year the first national study analyzing air pollution and schools found that exposure to toxic emissions not only affects children's health but can also negatively impact academic performance. The study also found that children of color are more likely to live near air pollution than white children. TWEET

Donate to Ban Fracking

Gas flaring at a Houston petrochemical facility. Flaring can lead to rapid ozone formation.

The Fracking and Chemical Industries Want To Make Things Worse 

The fracking-driven industry expansion will likely generate even more plastic and pollution as more ethane crackers come online. An ethane cracker is a type of petrochemical facility that uses a series of processes involving steam or heat to "crack" ethane into ethylene, the most frequently produced petrochemical, which common plastic is made from.

To date, there are approximately 30 ethane crackers in the U.S., and all but three are located in Texas and Louisiana. More than 20 new crackers and ethylene production expansion projects have been proposed across the U.S. While most are slated for the Gulf region, five have been proposed in the tristate Appalachian region of West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where there is a huge push to create a new epicenter for chemical manufacturing. 

Petrochemical and plastics production facilities in Houston.

Petrochemical and plastics production facilities in Houston.

To advance this plan, gas and chemical industries are investing in an Appalachian petrochemical complex in the Ohio River Valley, including regional ethane crackers, pipeline infrastructure, and a large underground storage facility. These industries and their supporters seemingly want to make Appalachia the next Houston, Texas.  

Both the shale gas and chemical industries in this area seem to view the expansion of infrastructure and pipelines, increased gas and natural gas liquids exports and the development of a larger, regional petrochemical sector as a panacea to their problems -- an overabundance of low-priced gas which can only become profitable through new markets (exports) or new products (plastics) to drive up demand.

There are sixteen chemical plants within a 3-mile radius of Houston's Manchester/Harrisburg community.

Dirty Industries Profit By Destroying Frontline Communities 

All of this would spell doom for the frontline communities in Houston, Appalachia and elsewhere, where children and families bear the startling human cost of dirty industry profits. Rather than continually investing in fossil fuels and chemical industries, we must invest in clean, renewable energy. It's time to move off fossil fuels once and for all. This means moving away from plastic as well. 

Take Action

Related Links

  • The Trans-Atlantic Plastics Pipeline: How Pennsylvania’s Fracking Boom Crosses the Atlantic
  • Problems: Fracking
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

Monsanto's Roundup is a "probable human carcinogen." We need to ban it!

Get the latest on your food and water with news, research and urgent actions.

Please leave this field empty

Latest News

  • Trump’s Out, Biden’s In! Now The Fight Of Our Lives On Climate Begins.

    Trump’s Out, Biden’s In! Now The Fight Of Our Lives On Climate Begins.

  • Biden’s 100-Day Must-Do List for a Cleaner, Healthier Country

    Biden’s 100-Day Must-Do List for a Cleaner, Healthier Country

  • Fracking, Federal Lands, And Follow-Through: Will President Biden Do What He Promised?

    Fracking, Federal Lands, And Follow-Through: Will President Biden Do What He Promised?

See More News & Opinions

For Media: See our latest press releases and statements

Food & Water Insights

Looking for more insights and our latest research?

Visit our policy & research library
  • Renewable Natural Gas: Same Ol' Climate-Polluting Methane, Cleaner-Sounding Name

  • The Case to Ban Fracking on Federal Lands

  • Dangerously Deep: Fracking’s Threat to Human Health

Fracking activist with stickersFracking activist in hatLegal team loves family farmsFood & Water Watch organizer protecting your food

Work locally, make a difference.

Get active in your community.

Food & Water Impact

  • Victories
  • Stories
  • Facts
  • Trump, Here's a Better Use for $25 Billion

  • Here's How We're Going to Build the Clean Energy Revolution

  • How a California Activist Learned to Think Locally

Keep drinking water safe and affordable for everyone.

Take Action
food & water watch logo
en Español

Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold & uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people’s health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.

Food & Water Watch is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Food & Water Action is a 501(c)4 organization.

Food & Water Watch Headquarters

1616 P Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20036

Main: 202.683.2500

Contact your regional office.

Work with us: See all job openings

  • Problems
    • Broken Democracy
    • Climate Change & Environment
    • Corporate Control of Food
    • Corporate Control of Water
    • Factory Farming & Food Safety
    • Fracking
    • GMOs
    • Global Trade
    • Pollution Trading
  • Solutions
    • Advocate Fair Policies
    • Legal Action
    • Organizing for Change
    • Research & Policy Analysis
  • Our Impact
    • Facts
    • Stories
    • Victories
  • Take Action
    • Get Active Where You Live
    • Organizing Tools
    • Find an Event
    • Volunteer with Us
    • Live Healthy
    • Donate
  • Give
    • Give Now
    • Give Monthly
    • Give a Gift Membership
    • Membership Options
    • Fundraise
    • Workplace Giving
    • Planned Giving
    • Other Ways to Give
  • About
  • News
  • Research Library
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • Donate
Learn more about Food & Water Action www.foodandwateraction.org.
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • 2021 © Food & Water Watch
  • www.foodandwaterwatch.org
  • Terms of Service
  • Data Usage Policy