data showed that Louisiana ranked fifth throughout the nation for total releases per square mile. Louisiana, which has a population of 4.67 million, produced 8.9 billion pounds of waste in 2018, which is down from 9.4 billion in 2000 which is a 5.3% improvement despite population and industry growth over the same time period. Back in 2003,seven of the ten plants in the state with the largest combined on- and offsite releases are located in Cancer Alley, and four of the ten plants with the largest onsite releases in the state are located there. In 1969, DuPont opened a plant to manufacture the chemical chloroprene, the main ingredient in neoprene. The plant was sold in 2015 to Japanese chemical company Denka. The area immediately adjacent to the Denka/DuPont neoprene plant in St. John the Baptist Parish has been recognized by the EPA as having a likelihood of getting cancer from air pollution over 700 times the national average. Cancer Alley is a well-known environmental sacrifice zone in the field of environmental justice. A sacrifice zone is defined as a geographical area that has been contaminated by dangerous chemical pollution. This term originated as "National Sacrifice Zones" during the Cold War to describe areas contaminated by the mining and processing of uranium to create nuclear weapons. Today, the term has been shortened and its definition expanded to include any location facing disproportionate exposure to dangerous pollutants. Community organizing The injustices of Cancer Alley have resulted in many instances of community organizing, where people living in a particular area work together to fight for their shared interests. Typically, this involves historically underrepresented groups. Cancer Alley is home to some particularly successful examples of community organizing that have been taking place since the 1970s, especially in the battle to prevent new factories from being built in this 85-mile stretch of land. In 1996, Shintech Inc. announced that they would be creating three new polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) manufacturing plants in Convent, Louisiana. The state of Louisiana issued Shintech permits to proceed with the project in 1997, despite their acknowledgment that these locations would be adding 623,000 pounds of pollutants to the air annually. The population within a five-mile radius of the site of the plants is 81% African American, compared to the overall parish population which is 49% African American. The residents of the Convent did not take this decision lightly. In response, a