Southern Louisiana has the highest concentration of petrochemical companies in the US. According to the 2003 article, the state accounts for at least one-fourth of production, known to be "cheap, accessible, and welcoming" to companies (227). Due to alarming health consequences, the region is fairly well known as "Cancer Alley", a term invented by environmental justice activists. These are straightforward symptoms of toxicity.
The author analyzes "toxic tours", organized excursions by environmental justice groups that take outsides to sites of environmental harm. She argues that such tours not only create ironic resemblances with the local tourism industry but have the power to the sites into places of public concern. To achieve this toxicity and its places need to be "sacralized" through "naming, framing/elevation, enshrinement, mechanical reproduction, and social reproduction" (229).
She concludes: "toxic tours in general can move activists both on and off the bus closer together, flooding our cultural memories with what is left to be done when we (re)build our communities, contest official tourist histories, and recognize the worth of joining the movement for environmental justice." (247)
