Let’s be clear: Here’s why material transparency matters

Cancerous chemicals and their burden on communities

An impressive concentration of petrochemical facilities are situated along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans—nicknamed “Cancer Alley”. The emissions from these facilities permeate into nearby areas, which are mostly Black and impoverished communities. These neighborhoods, called fenceline communities, are at a higher risk of cancer and respiratory hazards from toxic air pollution.

Fenceline communities are not just in Cancer Alley, however, and are scattered all across the U.S. Houston, Texas, for example, has a particularly high concentration of petrochemical manufacturing plants.

For Wickard and the project team working on the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge in Houston—a homelike facility with lodging and amenities for cancer patients receiving medical treatment—they saw firsthand how fenceline communities are impacted. When the team tested the water quality onsite, they found that the water contained vinyl chloride, a colorless gas used primarily to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and benzene, a derivative of crude oil—both of which are known causes of cancer.

“The guests at Hope Lodge could have potentially been drinking these chemicals had we not tested the water and installed a filtration system,” says Wickard.

These decisions can be streamlined through tools like our Precautionary List, a compilation of the most widely used problematic substances in the built environment, and our Transparency website, a digital database of these materials.

“We have to use this knowledge to empower ourselves and realize that this is not an all-or-nothing situation,” says Wickard. “Eliminating these substances of concern from every product is almost impossible. But instead of getting overwhelmed by this knowledge, we can use it to take baby steps in our daily lives.”