Imet my best friend, Ursula Guidry , in college: a gorgeous, bighearted pre-med student who grew up in Houston near four chemical manufacturing facilities. She became my bridesmaid, and I was hers. Ursula’s mom died when she was a kid, and her dad relocated to Port Arthur where their home overlooked a petroleum storage facility and was near five chemical plants, some just a mile away.

Ursula died from cancer when her children were in preschool. We’ll never know if her death was pure “bad luck,” or whether it had something to do with growing up amidst plastics-manufacturing facilities.

What we know for certain is that the toxic chemicals emitted by those facilities can ravage the human body.

It’s against that backdrop that I watch Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldi

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