In 2021 and 2022, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) published data that obscured rates of asthma-related emergency room (ER) visits in St. John Parish. The Parish is one of several parishes that are disproportionately impacted by industrial pollution in Louisiana. LDH had published smoothed data (data representing areas outside of St. John Parish) which displayed the average number of visits as 55, rather than the 98 annual visits represented by unsmoothed data (nearly twice the state average of 57 visits).

Once the mistake was revealed, LDH reported that a technical issue prevented updates to their data portal. An environmental health scientist with the Office of Public Health’s Section of Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology reported that Covid-19 had strained resources in the Bureau of Health Informatics. In a separate instance, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the Louisiana Department of Health were called out by the EPA for leaving Black residents disproportionately vulnerable to harmful pollutants. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the EPA conducted an investigation into reports of the agencies discriminating on the basis of race, and found that public health officials conducted flawed health studies and mischaracterized air monitoring data.