‘Cancer Alley’ on Mississippi River in Louisiana

From an Article by Elaine Schattner, National Public Radio, July 12, 2019

PHOTO: A stretch of the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, La., that is crowded with chemical plants has been called “Cancer Alley” because of the health problems there.

We already know how to stop many cancers before they start, scientists say. But there’s a lot more work to be done.

“Around half of cancers could be prevented,” said Christopher Wild in the opening session of an international scientific meeting on cancer’s environmental causes held in June. Wild is the former director of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

“Cancer biology and treatment is where most of the money goes,” he said, but prevention warrants greater attention. “I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work to improve treatment, but we haven’t balanced it properly.”

Perhaps no question about cancer is more contentious than its causes. People wonder, and scientists debate, if most malignancies stem from random DNA mutations and other chance events or from exposure to carcinogens, or from behaviors that might be avoided.

At the conference in Charlotte, N.C., scientists pressed for a reassessment of the role of environmental exposures by applying modern molecular techniques to toxicology. They called for more aggressive collection of examples of human pathology and environmental samples, including water and air, so that cellular responses to chemicals can be elucidated.

The hope is that by identifying specific traces of exposures in human cancer specimens, scientists can identify environmental causes of disease that might be prevented.

“Over 80,000 chemicals are used in the United States, but only a few have been tested for carcinogenic activity,” said Margaret Kripke, an immunologist and professor emeritus at MD Anderson Cancer Center, in an interview at the meeting.

“This has been a very neglected area of cancer research for the last several decades,” said Kripke, the driving force behind the conference, which was put on by the American Association for Cancer Research. “Environmental toxicology was very popular in the 1950s and 1960s,” she said, but genetics then began to overshadow studies of cancer’s environmental causes. “Toxicology fell by the wayside.”

While the incidence of tobacco-linked cancers has been falling, malignancies not associated with smoking are rising, Kripke said. Recent evidence suggests an escalating rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers. That trend implicates other environmental factors.

Around the globe, cancer’s overall incidence is climbing. This year, 18 million people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer and over 9 million will die from it.

Infections — many preventable, such as by human papillomavirus —account for 15% of new cases.

Another rising cause is obesity, along with urbanization. People generally get less physical activity and eat differently in cities, and pollution is heavier there, too. “As people move into cities, that will drive up cancer rates,” Wild said.

One of the biggest obstacles to preventing cancer is that many people just don’t think it’s feasible. Progress “requires long-term vision and commitment,” Wild said. “Funding is limited, and there’s little private sector investment.”

A change in the way benefits of cancer prevention are framed could help. “When I was at the IARC, one thing that struck me was the power of economic arguments over health arguments for preventing cancer,” Wild said.

Cancer treatment costs can be prohibitive. But productivity lost from premature deaths in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa alone runs $46.3 Abillion annually, he said. “Developing countries are not prepared to deal with the rising cancer burden.”

The precise proportion of cancers arising from environmental and occupational exposure to carcinogens is uncertain. In 2009, a report by the President’s Cancer Panel called prior approximations of around 6% “woefully out of date” and low. A 2015 paper by over a hundred concerned scientists cited “credible” estimates of 7% to 19%.

Scientist at the Charlotte meeting emphasized the complexity of cancer’s causes and the need for toxicologists to update methods to reflect that complexity, such as by studying interactions of environmental and genetic risks, and by examining cells after a mix of exposures. “Most toxic exposures do not occur singly,” said Rick Woychik, deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Until recently, many toxicology tests were performed in rodents, because it would be unethical to deliberately evaluate possible carcinogens in people. But these animal experiments are labor-intensive and slow, he said.

New alternatives are now being tried. “We learned from pharma that with robotics and high-throughput technology you can interrogate a lot of biology quickly and at lower costs,” he said.

Epidemiological research of human exposures has been stymied by the difficulty of proving cause-and-effect — that a particular substance actually causes cancer — and by shortcomings of survey data from questionnaires.

At the conference, scientists offered glimpses of new technology that is helping fill informational gaps.

Bogdan Fedeles of MIT explained how DNA serves as a lifelong “recording device.” He and others use duplex sequencing to examine human samples for genetic “fingerprints of exposure.”

Allan Balmain, a geneticist at University of California, San Francisco, spoke about mutational signatures in malignancies. In liver cancer, for instance, these signatures can offer causal clues—such as smoking, alcohol or aflatoxin, a product of mold that grows on some foods.

Many chemicals that cause or stimulate cancer growth are produced inside our bodies. “It’s not all about the environment,” Balmain said.

Others highlighted a conceptual shift in how scientists define carcinogens. Key characteristics may include a substance’s capacity to stimulate growth of malignant cells, or to induce inflammation—without necessarily causing DNA damage, long seen as the necessary.

“The answer to ‘What is a carcinogen?’ is changing” said Ruthann Rudel, a toxicologist at the Silent Spring Institute who has published extensively on breast carcinogens. She detailed new techniques to screen breast cancer cells for changes in response to specific chemical exposures.

The public health stakes for the field are high.

Professor Polly Hoppin, of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, discussed cancer-causing industrial contamination of drinking water at Camp Lejune, N.C., air pollution in St. John the Baptist Parish, La., and potential exposures to carcinogens from fracking and planned plastics production in Pennsylvania.

Hoppin reflected on the U.S. experience with tobacco cessation. Scientists knew that smoking causes cancer by the 1950s, she said. Implementing that knowledge required policy and incentives — like high cigarette taxes and public smoking bans — and took decades.

“The science wasn’t enough,” Hoppin said. “How many lives could have been saved if we’d acted sooner?”

>>> Elaine Schattner is a physician in New York writing a book on cancer attitudes that will be published by Columbia University Press.

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See Also: Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Residents Take the Fight for Environmental Justice on the Road | DeSmogBlog, July 8, 2019

Phillips 66 Cracker Complex, Cedar Bayou, TX

From an Article by Heather Doyle, PetroChemical Update, February 22, 2018

As natural gas liquids (NGL) growth accelerates in the US, the feedstock advantage will likely fuel additional investment decisions for mega projects along the Gulf Coast and Northeast, Phillips 66 executives said.

U.S. Phillips 66 is considering a second ethane cracker in the U.S. for its joint venture Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem), a joint venture with Chevron. A decision is not likely until next year, Phillips 66 executives said.

“We like the demand profile we see for global petrochemicals. I think it’s going to be a pace that will support a new wave of cracker investments,” said Greg Garland, CEO during an investor presentation held by Credit Suisse.

Garland told investors listening to the presentation that Phillips 66 remains constructive on the second cracker at CP Chem, and has already begun initial work around it.

“We probably won’t FID (make a final investment decision) on it until 2019, so that probably means heavy lifting becomes 2020, 2021 for us in terms of the capital,” he said.

Feedstock advantage goes to the United States

“US NGL production continues to grow. We think this is set to accelerate given the drilling activity that we see,” Garland said. “We believe that the US is going to remain advantaged in the global energy markets,” Garland said.

Abundant and cheap supply of U.S. NGLs, a group of hydrocarbons that includes ethane, propane, butane, isobutane, and pentane, from shale formations drove the first wave of petrochemical investments and created one of the biggest spending booms in history.

The greatest opportunity for petrochemical investment continues to be in cracker production, which uses NGLs such as ethane as a feedstock to create ethylene and polyethylene (PE), products that are traded globally and priced off crude oil. Making these products using cheap natural gas feedstock, and selling at prices based off higher oil prices has been a great cost advantage for the U.S.

At least 85% of U.S. petrochemical production is natural gas or NGL feedstock, while 75% of the world uses oil and naphtha based production, according to the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

But most product prices track crude oil, so a strong oil price is beneficial to U.S. producers making the same product using much cheaper NGLs as feedstock.

Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) are Ethane, Propane, Butane, Plus

NGLs are components of natural gas that are separated from the gas state in the form of liquids. This separation occurs in a field facility or in a gas processing plant through absorption, condensation or other method.

Natural gas production in the US is rising. Natural gas production is expected to grow 6%/year from 2017 to 2020, which is greater than the 4%/year average growth rate from 2005 to 2015, according to the most recent EIA Energy Outlook estimates.

Midstream companies are aggressively building the infrastructure to process gas and ship it via pipeline to petrochemical plants.

ONEOK recently announced plans to invest approximately $2.3 billion between now and 2020 to construct: a new 400,000 barrel/day NGL pipeline that will create additional NGL transportation capacity between ONEOK’s extensive Mid-Continent infrastructure in Oklahoma and the company’s existing NGL facilities in Mont Belvieu, Texas.

ONEOK will also invest in a new 125,000 bpd NGL fractionator in Mont Belvieu, Texas, and related infrastructure; and a new 200-million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) natural gas processing facility in the Williston Basin.

“We think given the NGLs we see coming at us on the US Gulf Coast, there’s going to be plenty of NGLs to feed those new crackers,” Garland said. “We believe this advantage is going to continue, despite that significant new ethylene capacity will be coming online over the next few years.”

Plastics Demand is Worldwide

Garland believes that global demand can support more petrochemical production. “Demand is growing faster than GDP, and billions of people are joining the middle class in India and China,” Garland said. This growing middle class will adopt buying habits that will result in more plastic consumption.

Most ethylene production goes toward polyethylene, a widely used plastic containing polymer. Plastics top downstream uses are in construction, automotive and packaging markets. Today’s average light vehicle contains 332 pounds of plastics and composites, or roughly 8% by weight, according to the ACC.

New wave in the chemical industry

Other companies are also considering new plants in what is becoming another wave of new projects in the US. The North American petrochemical industry will invest around $145 billion in industrial facilities as a result of low-cost and abundant shale gas by 2025, according to PLG Consulting.

In its Shale Gas Industrial Expansion Logistics Database (SHIELD), PLG estimates that at least 100 projects have been commissioned since 2011 valued at $51.1 billion. Another 76 projects will likely start up by the end of 2019, valued at $45.1 billion. And 48 2nd wave projects with likely start-up between 2020 and 2025 are valued at $48.5 billion.

Texas and Louisiana will dominate the buildout. Processed gas, ethylene, methanol, and resins will account for 80% of product volume output, according to PLG.

Cedar Bayou in Texas

Meanwhile, CP Chem is currently in the midst of rigorous commissioning activities, system checks and final certifications for its 1.5m tonne/year ethane cracker at Cedar Bayou, Texas.

It expects to start receiving feedstock this quarter, and be fully operational by the second quarter, Garland said. The cracker’s startup was pushed from year-end 2017 to the first quarter of 2018 after flooding from Hurricane Harvey last August.

CP Chem announced that its world-scale ethane cracker achieved the major milestone of mechanical completion at the end of December.

At peak construction, approximately 5,000 workers were employed on this project, helping to spawn additional economic activity across the region.

“With the mechanical completion of Cedar Bayou’s ethane cracker, we are now on the cusp of completing the most transformative project in our company’s history, or U.S. Gulf petrochemical project,” said Mark Lashier, president and chief executive officer of Chevron Phillips Chemical.

The new ethane cracker will produce product for the company’s ethylene business and feedstock for its ethylene derivatives businesses.

The polyethylene (PE) fleet now includes the two new PE units at Old Ocean, Texas, which were also part of the U.S. Gulf Coast petrochemical project. These units started up in September 2017 and play a critical role in Chevron Phillips Chemical’s strategic expansion to meet the growing global demand for PE.

In addition to the cracker and PE units, the company has purchased nearly 3,000 newly built rail cars and constructed a state-of-the-art storage-in-transition facility to ship PE via rail to customers both domestically and to ports for export around the globe.