Public data from a network of state air monitors around the Houston Ship Channel is hard to interpret and is often inadequate, leaving Latino-majority neighborhoods like Cloverleaf unaware of whether the air they breathe is safe.
In the Houston-area community of Cloverleaf, locals say the air often smells like rotten eggs, nail polish, or burning tires. Many residents said they suffer from respiratory problems, asthma, and skin ailments, and they wonder if the air they’re breathing is the culprit. Yet information about what they're breathing every day is hard to find, despite 23 state air monitoring sites near the 52-mile long Houston Ship Channel, one of the world’s largest petrochemical complexes where more than 200 facilities process fossil fuels into plastics, fertilizers and pesticides.
The story led by reporters Alejandra Martinez and Wendy Selene Pérez is a co-publication in English and Spanish by The Texas Tribune, Environmental Health News, palabra. (the NAHJ-sponsored news website), Radio Bilingue, La Esquina de Texas (in Spanish) as part of Altavoz Lab's Environmental Fellowship.
