STEVE MILLOY: Trump Already Blamed For Future Cancer From Venezuelan Oil
Venezuelan oil has been refined by one of the largest U.S. refineries operated by Chevron in Pascagoula, Miss. since the 1990s. That refinery may get the opportunity to process even more Venezuelan oil courtesy of the…
Venezuelan oil has been refined by one of the largest U.S. refineries operated by Chevron in Pascagoula, Miss. since the 1990s. That refinery may get the opportunity to process even more Venezuelan oil courtesy of the recently assumed guardianship of the Venezuelan oil industry by President Donald Trump.
But instead of appreciating the economic activity that tends to improve the health and standard of living of local communities, green activists have enlisted the New York Times to attack the facility as a health threat.
In her video story, “Chevron’s Oil Deals in Venezuela Could Worsen Pollution in Mississippi,” reporter Hiroko Tabuchi claimed, “Studies have found that exposure to pollutants from refineries can lead to acute short-term health effects like irritation, shortness of breath, even nausea.” Then she ominously added: “And in the long-term, they’ve been linked to cancer.”
As Tabuchi said this, the video showed the cover page of a 2025 study published in a journal called Environment Research Letters about detecting air pollution and its effects in Pascagoula.
But the video didn’t mention any other studies. Just the one, which doesn’t actually link refinery emissions to cancer. We’ll get to its claims later, but let’s first address the scariest claim made by Tabuchi, the one about cancer.
There is a published study that looked for a relationship between cancer and refinery workers, including at Pascagoula. Among 2,382 workers who worked at the Pascagoula refinery from 1963-1993, the workers had more than 30 percent less cancer than expected in the general population.
Bear in mind that these workers had much higher exposure to refinery emissions than local residents, then and now. Also, most of those exposures occurred before federal and state occupational and environmental regulations had been implemented. If refinery emissions caused cancer, one would have expected those cancers to show up already in the data. But they haven’t.