Diamond, Louisiana

By the banks of the Mississippi, Margie Eugene-Richard showed me where she grew up. That was where she caught crayfish as a kid. There was the place her grandfather grew sugar cane and watermelon. And that was the tangerine tree she planted. The sugar cane and watermelon have long gone. In their place now they are growing ethylene and propylene.

This was the poor, historically black community of Diamond, Louisiana, now disappearing - at its own request. Eugene-Richard lived for 50 years with the most overbearing, most unfeeling neighbour you can imagine, she says: the Shell Chemicals plant. Until 2001, her home was 17ft from the perimeter fence. It was a dangerous neighbour too. One explosion, in 1973, killed two people; another was experienced "like an earthquake" in New Orleans, 20 miles away. And always there was the smell: "Like bleach mixed with garlic and gas," she says.

The more insidious consequences of living next to a chemicals plant remain unclear, but Eugene-Richard has no doubt. "My sister died of sarcoidosis at 43. Then I thought about it. And you know what? Half her class had gone."

This stretch of the Mississippi - between New Orleans and the Louisiana state capital, Baton Rouge - is known to campaigners as "cancer alley". A huge proportion of the US's most unwelcome neighbours, especially chemical factories and oil refineries, are concentrated here. The river ensures an easy supply of water and transport; the oil and gas fields of the Gulf of Mexico are close by; the residents affected are black or poor or often both; and Louisiana politicians have long had a reputation as the most biddable in the nation.

Eugene-Richard was unusually determined, and eventually forced Shell to give up its policy of buying up nearby property at prices that reflected the fact that no one wanted to live there. Instead, in 2001, an 11-year campaign ended in an agreement to buy them out fairly.

The link between these plants and cancer is unproven - the most recent research attributed high local disease rates to smoking. Protesters reject these findings. Anne Rolfes runs the Bucket Brigade, which provides residents with kits to take samples if they suspect discharges. "Next to the refineries we find a great many sulphurs, a lot of them known to cause respiratory diseases. We find benzene, a known carcinogen. Up and down the streets, you find very rare cancers. Anecdotally, it's very shocking."

But fighters are rare. Ken Ford is now 66, and has lived at Chalmette, in the shadow of the Exxon-Mobil refinery, for 40 years. He has been too ill to work for the past 30. "I really believe that living here has made me sick. But just try to prove it. Several people living on my block have come down with rare cancers in the past two years. People will not complain. I try to get them interested, and they say: 'Man, you don't want to mess with that.'" Ford claims the Bucket Brigade's equipment showed that the refinery exceeded permitted emissions levels 32 times between May and July this year. The company says there were no such incidents.

A mile from Ford's home is the site of one of the US's most famous victories over the British, the Battle of New Orleans (1815). The British came over from where the refinery is now, and most of their dead are buried underneath. Guides, dressed as militiamen, fire muskets and cannon towards the refinery for the tourists, who come by paddle steamer from the city. But it's not a whiff of grapeshot they get back. It's a whiff that smells like rotten eggs, or hydrogen sulphide. "It does rather detract from the historical perspective," says a guide, sadly.

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