Biden blames pollution in Delaware for him and others getting cancer

In a speech about the climate crisis, Joe Biden blamed oil refineries in the Northeast for giving him and those he grew up with cancer.

The president spoke in Somerset, Massachusetts, near a manufacturing hub for renewable energy components, about how pollution from oil refineries in Pennsylvania would drift over state lines into his hometown of Claymont, Delaware, Independent reports.

“The first frost, you knew what was happening,” he said on Wednesday. “You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window. That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up [with] have cancer and why for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation. But that’s the past, and we’re going to get — we’re going to build a different future, one with clean energy, good-paying jobs.”

The White House later clarified that Mr Biden has had several non-melanoma skin cancers removed, but remains a “healthy” 79-year-old.

The president called the climate crisis a “clear and present danger” and took the GOP to task for failing to see it that way, noting “not a single Republican” had gotten behind his climate plans.

“This is an emergency and I will look at it that way,” Mr Biden said as he stood outside Brayton Point, a former coal-fired power plant being converted into a renewables hub making undersea cables for Massachusetts’s growing offshore wind energy.

“When it comes to fighting climate change, I will not take no for an answer,” the president continued.