Major Environmental Justice Victory against Plastics!

I’d like to share a recent story about how a small First Nation in present-day Sarnia, Ontario, Canada tamed one of the largest petrochemical corporations and toxic polluters in the world. Their accomplishment deserves to be celebrated and widely shared.

The Aamjiwnaang First Nation (pronounced am-JIN-nun) is home to about 1,000 citizens of a resilient and thriving sovereign nation. Almost three hundred years ago, according to their early history, about 15,000 Aamjiwnaang people lived in some nine villages across an expansive swath of land along both sides of the St. Clair River around the south end of Lake Huron.

Now fast forward. Ninety-five percent of this community was wiped out by genocidal violence and contagion. Their homeland was steadily reduced to four tiny reserves. Their local economy was destroyed. Many children were removed to boarding schools, some never to return. Such a retelling of the calamitous arc of settler-colonialism isn’t new.

But at Aamjiwnaang, a uniquely modern environmental injustice also reared up. About eighty years ago, the oil and chemical industry moved in. It grew and grew until more than sixty petrochemical plants surrounded their reserve on three sides. What followed were decades of air and water pollution, fires, noxious odors, and other chemical releases.

Now, the surrounding region is known as Chemical Valley, where petrochemical industry pollution has been cited for both acute and long-term health effects on local communities.

This past spring, a community air monitoring network sounded another alarm in Chemical Valley. Excessive benzene levels were detected at the fenceline at levels more than twenty times higher than advised by government health experts. Benzene exposures from styrene plants and oil refineries pose an ever-present chronic threat, but not usually this severe.

Benzene exposure has been proven to cause several types of leukemia, cancer of the blood, in humans. High levels can also cause adverse respiratory and neurological effects.

Most of the benzene came from the nearby INEOS styrene plant, which takes benzene from the Imperial Oil refinery and converts it to styrene – another carcinogen.  This plant, owned by the global INEOS petrochemical corporation, abuts the Aamjiwnaang First Nation.

On April 18, 2024, this CBC News headline said it all: “Aamjiwnaang First Nation members say industrial benzene emissions in Sarnia, Ont. area made them ill”. Some reported to the hospital with nausea, headaches and sore throats that got worse as the day went on.

First Nation declares state of emergency

The Aamjiwnaang First Nation called for a shut down of the INEOS styrene plant for endangering their health and welfare and violating air quality standards for benzene.

With the help of Ecojustice, they took their case to Ottawa where international treaty negotiators were convening. CBC News reported with this headline: “Aamjiwnaang First Nation pushes for seat in global plastics treaty negotiations: ‘[The pollution] affects us every single day,’ elected councillor Janelle Nahmabin says”.

Under the auspices of the United Nations, international delegates are debating whether to reduce the production and toxicity of plastics, as called for by the member nations of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, or whether to simply throw more money at collection of plastic waste in hopes of improving its pitiful recycling rate of less than 10%.

Shortly after the Aamjiwnaang First Nation declared a formal state of emergency, the Ontario provincial and federal governments in Canada finally took unprecedented actions. They effectively shut down the INEOS styrene plant until the company installed major benzene emission controls! Canadian governments have rarely taken the environmental justice complaints of First Nations so seriously before.

In June, INEOS announced that it will permanently close this plant. The company chose to eliminate 80 good union jobs rather than invest in protecting workers and the community from unacceptably high benzene exposures. Production at this styrene plant had increased by more than ten-fold since it first opened 40 years ago.

Benzene emissions driven by polystyrene plastic

Declining use of polystyrene plastic may be the real culprit. About 60% of styrene is used to make polystyrene resin and foam, mostly for food packaging and food service ware.

But polystyrene production has declined  by about 30% in the United States, Canada and Mexico in the last dozen years in response to corporate and government policies, third-party standards, and technology changes; and less than 60% of polystyrene production capacity was used in 2023, according to the annual report of the ACC Plastic Industry Producer’s Statistics Group, as compiled by Vault Consulting, LLC.

Older chemical plants with higher marginal costs of production are the first to be shuttered when markets shrink, and when external costs (like toxic pollution) are rightly folded into the cost of doing business.

Still, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation will breathe healthier knowing that through their own agency at least one major toxic polluter has been held to account.  This major environmental justice victory says that enough is enough – excessive petrochemical pollution is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Of course, much more needs to be done to rein in the “normal” levels of emissions and exposures to toxic chemicals from petrochemical and plastics plants in Chemical Valley. And the Aamjiwnaang First Nation is hardly alone in its suffering.

Environmental justice remains a constant struggle

Other sacrifice zones to petrochemical plastics abound in places like Cancer Alley, Louisiana and the Texas Gulf Coast. In fact, six other styrene plants operate in those regions, including the largest styrene and polystyrene production site in the world.

Styrene is made from benzene. About 85% of the benzene produced at oil refineries is used to make plastics with 30% going to polystyrene production, its largest single end-use. In the U.S. today more than 5% of refineries exceed EPA’s benzene exposure action level at their fenceline, and more than 15% have exceeded this health advisory for a total of 52 weeks or more, according to Environmental Integrity Project. Mandatory fenceline monitoring for benzene around 136 oil refineries and related plants generate these data.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted its first major rule in 25 years to crack down on toxic air emissions from the synthetic organic chemical industry. In 2026, if this rule is not struck down by the conservative courts or a Trump EPA, about 200 more chemical plants must start fenceline monitoring for ambient air concentrations of six hazardous, plastics-related chemicals including benzene and highly-toxic ethylene oxide used to make PET plastic beverage bottles and polyester clothing.

The rule will also reduce emissions, but it fails to require the use of all available control technologies, such as leakless pumps, valves, and flanges that otherwise spew so-called fugitive emissions from as many as 10,000 connections at a typical chemical plant. Emissions from each connector can’t be measured so fenceline monitoring is critical.

Even if the U.S. air toxics rule is fully and timely enforced, significant unjust cancer risks will remain, especially in Texas and Louisiana where almost half the plants are located. Under the adopted rule, 1.6 million Brown and Black residents who live within about six miles of a chemical plant will still face serious cancer risks. They make up 64% of the impacted population, well above the national average of 40% people of color. Serious cancer risks will still be faced by more than 7 million people who live within about 30 miles of one of these chemical plants. (Ethylene oxide exposure drives most of this cancer risk.)

Actual cancer risks are much higher than above. Recent research shows that EPA underestimates community exposure to ethylene oxide in Cancer Alley by as much as a factor of ten. Another sophisticated monitoring study showed that public officials routinely underestimate fugitive emissions from petrochemical plants by five- to fifteen-fold.

The people who live and work in the Chemical Valley, Cancer Alley, and other communities where the petrochemical industry is clustered deserve much greater health protection and environmental justice. Serious policies and funding are needed to ensure a just transition for workers and communities who are economically dependent on the petrochemical industry, whose products should be replaced by safer, more sustainable materials.

We congratulate the Aamjiwnaang First Nation on a major environmental justice victory. And we heartedly support the efforts of you and other frontline communities who are driving change and continuing the struggle for health, justice and a sustainable planet.