Cancer risks in parts of Louisiana's industrial area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge are up to 11 times higher than estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a study by scientists at Johns Hopkins University.

In a peer-reviewed study that aimed to measure the prevalence of 17 pollutants and compare that to measurements used in EPA models, researchers deployed a mobile air monitoring lab across Ascension, Iberville, St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes. They then used the concentrations of those chemicals in the air to estimate cancer risks in 15 different census tracts.

In all but one of those tracts, cancer risks from air pollutants outweighed the estimates from the EPA's models. All of the census tracts had "unacceptable" levels of cancer risk, the re

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