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Comment by JackMorgan | Hacker News Reader

I used to live near Longview TX, and it was fairly well known that people living near Eastman Chemical got cancer at higher rates. The issue is TX politicians just don't care. Which if you think if it, is really sadistic. To have a big company that is factually poisoning your population, but no one does anything about it.

Almost like they are bribed by Eastman.

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One of the things I took away from the "Tom's River" book was that the difference between a cancer cluster that everyone knows exists, and one that doesn't exist at all, may be just one case. It is hard to gauge such things from folk wisdom.

A substantial faction of Texas tout their state as “pro-business” and “anti-regulation.” Half the time it’s just letting the companies do whatever damage they please that other states wouldn’t allow happen to their residents. It’s easy to see why it persists when attempting to tackle it would be hounded by people and politicians making it seem like you’re being anti-business.

It's no surprise a lot of these dark red spots of cancer causing VOCs are in TX. And Longview TX is dark red even for TX.

I'll never really understand how folks are okay with these things, especially the ones near schools.

Nobody would allow it if they had the power. Nobody (individually) has the power, and collective "bargaining" with large corporations via elected officials that don't make it their platform is just hopeless.

Nobody has to even be malicious. There are millions of problems every day, so you can get caught up in the "fix this first" cycles.

Is that the last film roll factory?

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