Why is this top Democrat absent from the fight against toxic pollution in Cancer Alley?

• Cedric Richmond has received $128,000 from chemical firms
• Local residents: 'It was like he was trying to brush us off'

On a crisp autumn day in Washington last month, Mary Hampton and Robert Taylor entered Cedric Richmond's office hoping their federal representative would take the time to listen.

The two had travelled 1,000 miles from Reserve, a town in southern Louisiana where, according to US government science, the risk of cancer is the highest in the country due to airborne toxins emitted by a nearby chemical plant. Hampton and Taylor have lost numerous relatives to the disease over decades, and blame the plant's emissions of a compound named chloroprene, listed by the US government as a likely carcinogen.