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East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

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East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

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East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

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East Yard would like to cordially invite you to our 8th Annual Fighting For Life Celebration, a special event honoring our allies, Melissa Lin Perrella and Jane Williams, in the movement. 2020 really forced us to reimagine what our work looked like and allowed us to create a variety of connectivity opportunities. We use our Fighting For Life Celebration to continue to uplift our communities' resiliency and victories. When reports and research studies call our communities "disadvantaged," we denounce them and instead fight to uplift our own narratives and shine. These moments of shining are not possible without our incredible base of members and supporters. They are also brought to us by generous donations and sponsorships from events like this. So we hope you consider sponsoring our event, purchasing an ad, or buying tix and donating some for our members.

For more information on sponsorship opportunities, click here

For more information on purchasing ads, click here

If you would like more information on sponsorship and ad opportunities, contact Alessandro Negrete alessandron.eycej@gmail.com

Melissa Lin Perrella is a Senior Attorney and the Senior Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Environmental Justice Team. Her work focuses on improving air quality in environmental justice communities affected by the freight transportation system. She is an expert on the health effects of diesel emissions, technologies for reducing air pollution from ships, trucks, and locomotives, enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act, and defending landmark state and local clean air programs against federal preemption claims. Melissa has also been a member of a number of coalitions and movement-building initiatives aimed at building power within environmental justice communities and moving philanthropic resources to such communities. Before joining NRDC in 2004, Melissa worked in private practice as a general litigation associate. She is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and U.C. Berkeley. Melissa is a proud finisher of the Boston Marathon and a mother of two children.

Jane Williams serves as the Executive Director of California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT). A network of local environmental justice groups in California, CCAT works to protect communities from industrial pollutants. Jane carries on the tradition of her mother, environmentalist Stormy Williams, working to protect the health of people and the environment as a common cause. Her mother, Norma, had launched a campaign that sought to identify toxins causing a brain cancer cluster among children in her small town of Rosamond, California. Jane has organized dozens of communities to successfully fight the building of facilities that would pollute their environments, such as incinerators, landfills, nuclear waste dumps, and industrial plants. Jane has also served on a number of federal and state advisory committees that study the effects of toxic chemicals on children and public health. She has raised three children, has one granddaughter, and has a passion for rescuing, riding, and caring for horses.

Astrid is a Salvadoran-American poet and journalist based in Los Angeles. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from California State University, Dominguez Hills. Here, she was captain of the slam poetry team and president of the poetry club, FLOW. Astrid has since become a beacon in L.A.'s writing community, shining through with her annual showcase Talk That Sh!t while having highly esteemed featured performances at Take the Mic, Unplugd LA, Sela Arts Festival, and LitFest Pasadena just to name a few. She lives in Long Beach and continues to share her editorial voice at L.A. Taco, an independent press covering the native Los Angeles community. Her work has also been featured at Viva La Muxer and Cultural Weekly.

Cozcon is a black queer artist and writer creating work that aims to expand the visual language of black and brown life in America using the iconography of pop culture, high fashion, and prominent contemporary femme figures. You can find more of their work by following them on Instagram @Cozcon.

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East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

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East Yard would like to cordially invite you to our 8th Annual Fighting For Life Celebration, a special event honoring our allies, Melissa Lin Perrella and Jane Williams, in the movement. 2020 really forced us to reimagine what our work looked like and allowed us to create a variety of connectivity opportunities.

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Welcome back to Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment. I'm Sammy Roth.

There were several topics I considered writing about this week, including the results of California's latest cap-and-trade auction and a bill in Sacramento dealing with the proposed Eagle Mountain hydropower project.

But after a week of protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, I realized there was only one topic I could focus on in this newsletter: environmental injustice. It's a term that describes how people of color and poor communities have borne disproportionate harm from pollution, and the discriminatory systems that have perpetuated those inequities.

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There are countless links between environmental degradation and inequality. Consider water contamination in predominantly black and brown communities, such as Flint, Mich., where experts say the drinking water crisis was rooted in systemic racism. Or research finding that, in the U.S., the best predictor of whether you live near a hazardous waste site is the color of your skin.

In Los Angeles, poisonous lead contamination at homes near the closed Exide battery recycling plant has yet to be fully cleaned up, hurting working-class Latino families, as my colleague Tony Barboza has reported. Black, Latino and low-income California residents are especially likely to live near unplugged oil and gas wells that can spew pollution, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. People of color are more likely than white people to live alongside power plants, oil refineries and landfills.

Rachel Ramirez discussed the roots of environmental injustice in a piece for Grist this week, noting that "some legacies of redlining - the government-sanctioned denial of home loans and insurance to communities of color - include housing stock that is disproportionately located near polluting industrial infrastructure."
The COVID-19 pandemic has only worsened existing inequities.
In a story for Outside magazine, Heather Hansman explains how a lack of access to clean drinking water in the Navajo Nation has helped fuel the country's worst known COVID-19 outbreak by infection rate. My colleague Kurtis Lee has also written several pieces about the Navajo Nation's unique vulnerability to the coronavirus, as well as its lack of running water and electricity.

There's already research linking polluted air - which, in America, blacks and Latinos are more likely to breathe - with a higher likelihood of dying from COVID-19.

Marshall Shepherd, a climate scientist and former president of the American Meteorological Society, wrote that "I can't breathe" - some of the last words spoken by George Floyd as a police officer pressed a knee into his neck - seems like a theme for 2020.
"The historic coronavirus pandemic has literally taken the breath of many people," Shepherd wrote in a piece for Forbes.
Then there's global warming.

The climate crisis often hits people of color hardest, in the U.S. and around the world. It's true in cities, where black, brown and low-income people experience hotter temperatures during deadly heat waves because their neighborhoods lack tree cover and parks, or because they're near freeways or industrial facilities. It's true in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria caused thousands of deaths and gave birth to a climate movement. It's true in Central America, where climate-fueled drought is driving migration.

Writing for the Guardian a few years ago, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and fellow activist Nyeusi Nguvu argued that "the inequalities that turn an extreme weather event into a disaster or human catastrophe mirror the inequalities that cause the disproportionate loss of black and poor life globally - and the exact systems that Black Lives Matter fights against."
"Environmental injustice has always been an issue and a fight taken on by black and poor communities," they wrote. "We are the first to die, but we are also the first to fight on the frontlines."
Those ideas help explain why a growing number of activists support policy proposals, such as the Green New Deal, that tie climate change action to significant economic reforms meant to tackle inequality and racism.
Or as many folks have put it on Twitter: "Climate justice is racial justice."

A reminder that climate justice IS racial justice.

You cannot say you fight for climate justice without also fighting for racial justice. You cannot say you're a climate activist without understanding that the two struggles are inseparable.#BlackLivesMatter
- Jamie Margolin (@Jamie_Margolin) June 1, 2020

At the same time, racism can derail efforts to fight climate change, according to the marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.
"How can we expect black Americans to focus on climate when we are so at risk on our streets, in our communities, and even within our own homes?" Johnson asks in an op-ed for the Washington Post."How can people of color effectively lead their communities on climate solutions when faced with pervasive and life-shortening racism?"
As a journalist, I don't pretend to have the answers. But I know it's incumbent on me to be part of the conversation, and to shine a light on environmental injustice. So consider this week's newsletter my commitment to doing more. Hold me accountable, please.

Here's what else is happening around California and the American West:

TOP STORIES

For the first time since 1885, the U.S. got more energy from renewables than from coal in 2019. This was going to happen sooner or later, as solar and wind power are increasingly beating coal on cost. But it's still a huge milestone; here's the story from Katherine Blunt at the Wall Street Journal. Coal's decline has continued in 2020, with 13 plant closures announced this year, per Benjamin Storrow at E&E News. (For a slightly out-of-date look at coal closures in the West, here's a story I wrote in February.)

In a landmark vote, a majority of Chevron shareholders demanded that the oil giant issue a report on its climate change lobbying. The shareholder resolution is nonbinding, as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik explains in his piece. But it's the latest sign that investors want to know how oil and gas companies plan to keep making money in a climate-constrained world.

Probably my favorite read this week was "Cash Flows: How Investors Are Banking On the West's Water Scarcity." It's a collaboration between public radio stations and other nonprofit news outlets in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, tracking how out-of-town private investors are buying up farmland in hopes of selling rural water supplies to cities, or otherwise transferring water from agriculture to other uses. The fear of water transfers is also pervasive in California's Imperial County, as I wrote in April.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

Can a new climate consensus unite the left and boost Joe Biden? In two pieces for Vox, David Roberts makes the case that after years of disagreement between various left-of-center factions on climate change, there's an emerging policy consensus focused on sector-specific standards, public investments and a commitment to justice. Roberts also argues that embracing this consensus would help Joe Biden build support among climate activists, environmental justice advocates, unions and other key groups.

The tracks do not appear to be greased for quick construction of high-speed rail in California. Twelve years after voters approved bonds to build a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, environmental impact statements are still trickling in. The latest one focuses on a 14-mile segment from downtown L.A. to Burbank, as Ralph Vartabedian writes for The Times. Ralph also reports that the bullet train may need operating subsidies, contrary to what voters were once promised.

Environmental activists are pushing back against Gavin Newsom's budget proposal. With California facing a projected $54-billion budget shortfall amid the coronavirus crisis (remember the coronavirus?), Gov. Newsom has taken a sledgehammer to all sorts of climate and environmental priorities, proposing less spending - relative to his earlier budget plan - on electric vehicle rebates, oil and gas regulation and preserving wildlife habitats, as Dustin Gardiner reports for the San Francisco Chronicle.

POWER STRUGGLES

The electric truck start-up Nikola is about to go public. Here's the story by Russ Mitchell for The Times. If you've never heard of Nikola, there are a few things to know: Like Tesla, the company is named for electric grid pioneer Nikola Tesla; and unlike Tesla, the company's founder has only nice things to say about his competitor, Elon Musk. (Also unlike Tesla, Nikola plans to use hydrogen fuel cell technology rather than lithium-ion batteries. I've written about hydrogen a few times recently; see here and here.)

Let's call it a tale of two San Diegos. A new report finds that L.A.'s neighbor to the south has the second-most solar power of any U.S. city, as the San Diego Union-Tribune's Rob Nikolewski reports. (Los Angeles came in first, although San Diego has more solar per capita.) But what about transportation, the largest source of climate pollution? David Garrick reports that some San Diegans are unhappy about a plan to spend suburban development fees building bike lines and bus routes in denser neighborhoods.

AROUND THE WEST

Federal judges are pushing back against President Trump's fossil fuel agenda. It's been a rough few months for the Trump administration's efforts to open up more of the West's public lands to oil and gas drilling: Federal judges have canceled fossil fuel leases across more than 300,000 acres in Montana and Wyoming, rejected plans for new natural gas wells in Colorado, and once again blocked construction of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, as Matthew Brown reports in an Associated Press roundup.

The Klamath Basin is facing a severe water shortage. It's worth remembering that in a state as big as California, drought can be a regional phenomenon. So even though Southern California has gotten a good amount of rain the last few months, the state's far northern region is still quite dry - which is why the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation told farmers along the Oregon border to plan for a lot less water than normal, then cut their estimates even further, as the San Francisco Chronicle's Kurtis Alexander reports.

Here's an absolutely wild story. As oil and gas drillers fight Colorado's growing push to regulate them, a University of Colorado scientist who has been monitoring emissions from fracking operations was abruptly fired by the university, as Daniel Glick reports for InsideClimate News. The school claimed he misused public funds, but Glick uncovered several holes in that explanation.

ONE MORE THING

It's been a heavy week, to say the least, so I'll end with something light and fun.

People have been telling me for years to watch "California's Gold," a public television program hosted by the late Huell Howser that explored "the state's rich history, cultural diversity, landmarks, natural wonders, amazing people and points of interest, especially lesser known and out-of-the-way places," per IMDb. I'd never seen an episode until this weekend, when I watched Huell's visit to one of my favorite places in the world, Mt. San Jacinto outside Palm Springs.

The episode focuses on two things: the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, an amazing contraption that carries visitors nearly 6,000 feet up the mountain in little more than 10 minutes; and the Colorado River Aqueduct, which bores a tunnel through the mountain on its path to deliver water from the California-Arizona border to the Los Angeles area. Huell actually gets a look inside the tunnel!

Anyway, the episode is an absolute treat. I'm looking forward to watching more "California's Gold" at the show's archives.
I'll be back in your inbox next week. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.

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Why communities fighting for fair policing also demand environmental justice

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Welcome back to Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment. I'm Sammy Roth. There were several topics I considered writing about this week, including the results of California's latest cap-and-trade auction and a bill in Sacramento dealing with the proposed Eagle Mountain hydropower project.

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Marissa Evans is joining the Los Angeles Times as a health reporter with a focus on covering Southern California's communities of color. She comes from the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, where she writes about social issues and has been at the center of both their pandemic coverage and reporting on the killing of George Floyd.

Evans' background made her an ideal choice. She has a deep history of writing about inequities in housing, healthcare and access to social services. As Evans told us: "The pandemic has laid bare the disparate impact on communities of color and how our healthcare system was ill prepared to consider how inequality determines who lives or dies from COVID-19. I want to be on the frontlines telling those stories."

Before the Star Tribune, Evans covered healthcare and human services for the Texas Tribune and was a healthcare policy reporter for CQ Roll Call in Washington, D.C. While at the Texas Tribune, she won the 2018 Online News Assn. award for a project on Texas maternal mortality.

Her work has led to safer work conditions for Texas health officials working in a mold-ridden building, exposed a system of private Minnesota hospitals seizing tax refunds of some of its poorest patients and illuminated the hidden trauma Black communities face after Floyd's death. She is also a trainer with the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a program created to increase the ranks of journalists of color in the field of investigative reporting.

Evans starts in March.

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Marissa Evans joins The Times as a health reporter focusing on communities of color

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Marissa Evans is joining the Los Angeles Times as a health reporter with a focus on covering Southern California's communities of color. She comes from the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, where she writes about social issues and has been at the center of both their pandemic coverage and reporting on the killing of George Floyd.

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Everyone deserves to live in a clean, healthy environment because the environment around us affects our health. Many Los Angeles County neighborhoods have business and industry mixed in with homes, schools, day cares, and elder care facilities. We know that poor people and people of color are more likely across the United States to live near polluting factories and are exposed to more pollution than wealthier communities and white communities. In the early 1980s in the United States it was recognized that hazardous waste sites are found more often in low-income communities of color than in wealthier and predominantly white communities.

With that realization, local, state, and federal agencies also recognized the need to work towards environmental justice.

As defined by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

For more information on Los Angeles County's efforts to achieve environmental justice, please visit the Center for Health Equity website or see the Center for Health Equity Fact Sheet (English) | Hoja Informativa del Centro de Equidad en Salud (Español)

Learn about opportunities with the Environmental Health Division of LA County Public Health: Jobs andInternships

Learn about LA County Public Health's Youth Advisory Council

Communication Resources for Agencies

Plain Language Guide, "Say it Right the First time". Learn practical tips about the three principles: audience, content, and design. See the checklist on page 39.

Create easy-to understand materials with "Simply Put" See the checklist on page 29.

Assess a document -take this quiz while you're developing a document to identify areas of improvement, see the CDC Clear Communication Index Widget

Identifying Burdened Communities

The State Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) created a way to measure the unfair differences in pollution and health burden that we see in communities throughout California. The tool they created, called CalEnviro Screen, ranks each community in the state. It is easy to see how pollution and the potential health effects of pollution are distributed across our communities because the CalEnviro Screen displays the rankings in a color-coded map.

Each community's rank is calculated by combining two factors: the amount of pollution present and the characteristics of people living in the community. You can use the mapping tool to see your community's rank and look further into the factors that make up your score. For more information, visit OEHHA's website at the links below.

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Los Angeles County Department of Public Health

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Everyone deserves to live in a clean, healthy environment because the environment around us affects our health. Many Los Angeles County neighborhoods have business and industry mixed in with homes, schools, day cares, and elder care facilities.

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Defensive Wins, a Disastrous Budget, and a Need for Community-Centered Environmental Justice Solutions

2023 was, in many ways, a disappointing year for environmental justice communities across California. Bold bills like SB 556 (Gonzalez) - which aimed to shift the burden of proof to polluters, holding fossil fuel companies legally accountable for health issues like cancer or high-risk pregnancy suffered by ... Read More

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- California Environmental Justice Alliance

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2023 was, in many ways, a disappointing year for environmental justice communities across California. Bold bills like SB 556 (Gonzalez) - which aimed to shift the burden of proof to polluters, holding fossil fuel companies legally accountable for health issues like cancer or high-risk pregnancy suffered by ... Read More

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Thousands of Californians are facing life-threatening health problems due to failed regulations and years' worth of delayed cleanup of toxic substances in their workplaces, homes, and schools. Some of the stories and culprits of toxic pollution including corporations like the battery-smelter Exide, the copper-recycler Phil-Bro Tech, and the U.S military. Many of the most persistent health problems, however, are caused by seemingly harmless offenders, like dry-cleaning businesses across the state.
The bottom line: no matter the cause of the chemical pollution, polluters should be regulated and made to pay for the cleanup of their toxic messes.
It's time for decision-makers to hold the broken Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) accountable to environmental justice communities.

What is the Department of Toxic Substances Control?
The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) is the state department responsible for enforcing hazardous waste laws, protecting Californians and the environment from harmful effects of toxic chemicals by restoring and cleaning up contaminated sites, and compelling the development of safer products.

For years, DTSC has failed to protect residents. The department has a record of weak enforcement, slow and botched clean-up efforts, and back-room negotiations with polluters. And by DTSC's own accounting, there are 200,000 suspected toxic sites across the state that continue to go unregulated due to lack of funding.
In 2021, Communities Demand Accountability from the DTSC
For Gloria Herrera, a resident of Delano County who organizes with the Center on Race Poverty and the Environment (CRPE), DTSC's failures appear in the form of a plume of chemicals issuing up from below a set of dry-cleaners in her home of Delano. The combination of perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene that leakes up from these cleaners is a deadly combination, and common to dry-cleaning facilities across the state. A 2019 report by the DTSC found that 75% of dry-cleaners statewide have contaminated surrounding groundwater and soil with cancer-causing chemicals.

In Delano, home of the United Farmworkers, Gloria organizes with the Delano Guardians, a community organization founded to protect citizens' equitable access to water and clean air. "The DTSC is failing us," Gloria shared with CEJA: "They need to build a community advisory group in order to make the cleanups happen."

Hundreds of miles to the south of Delano in the small city of Maywood, said, speaking with an organizer for Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), "I was not at all surprised. After all, environmental racism is a real threat to low income communities of color." Veronica Ayala shared her reaction to one of the state's most toxic meltdowns: "When news broke that Exide had released large amounts of lead in my community," Veronica

What shocked Veronica the most was the absence of any regulatory action: "I was surprised that the governmental organizations meant to protect us from these hazards disregarded our concerns and still, after many years, have not taken the steps to alleviate the wounds of Exide's contamination."

Jacqueline Amparo lives in Huntington Park. Speaking with a CBE organizer, Amparo shared that she and her family were never warned about the high levels of lead in her front yard when they moved in. "We were never told about the soil testing DTSC conducted on the property. After 2 years of attempting to obtain the results from DTSC, the realtors and the previous owner, we finally found out that our home tested to 247.9ppm of lead." Although there is no safe level of lead exposure - lasting damage to the brain and nervous system occurs at levels as low as 5 micrograms - Jacqueline's family's yard tested at three times the allowable limit.

"Due to lack of funding, DTSC denied our home's clean up," Jacqueline continued. "As a community affected by Exide we deserve a complete cleanup with a clear and transparent process by DTSC."
History of CEJA's engagement with the DTSC
For over a decade, CEJA members Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE) and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) have fought for accountability from the DTSC.

This year, the state must create greater accountability and oversight over DTSC to protect frontline EJ communities who have been exposed to toxic pollution in and around their homes.

The department must center the voices of impacted communities to ensure that changes to DTSC lead to concrete improvements in its operations, more timely enforcement over polluters, and more effective site clean-up and remediation.

Now more than ever, we need to pressure decision makers to take action for an accountable DTSC. Join us for more action updates on Twitter and Instagram @cejapower, @CRPEEJ, @CBECAL, @PSR-LA or join our mailing list today.

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Communities Call for Accountability from State Toxics Regulator - California Environmental Justice Alliance

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The department responsible for cleaning up California's toxic waste problem is failing working class communities of color. Thousands of Californians are facing life-threatening health problems due to failed regulations and years' worth of delayed cleanup of toxic substances in their workplaces, homes, and schools.

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Freeway 500 foot pollution zone should espand!

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Freeway 500 foot pollution zone should espand!

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If anyone knows where to find refuge from air pollution near Los Angeles freeways, it's Suzanne Paulson.

The UCLA atmospheric chemistry professor has spent years studying how invisible plumes of dirty air from car- and truck-choked roadways spread into surrounding neighborhoods - increasing residents' risk of cancer, asthma, heart disease and other illnesses.

So when she bought a home in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Santa Monica in 2007, she made sure it was on a quiet street far from the 10 Freeway - well beyond the 500-foot zone where California air quality regulators say it's unhealthful to put homes, schools and day cares.

But it wasn't far enough.

In the late night and early morning, it turns out, traffic pollution drifts much farther than during the day, and can extend more than a mile downwind from the freeway.

That discovery, made by Paulson and her colleagues, is one example of new research revealing how much your exposure to harmful levels of vehicle pollution is affected by your specific surroundings. It's not only your distance from traffic, but other details such as wind patterns, freeway design, the time of day and the types of cars, trucks and buildings around you that determine the risk.

"We're learning that the pollution you breathe comes down to where you are, when you're there and what the traffic is like," Paulson said.

Such findings are prompting new advice from air quality officials and scientists on steps you can take to protect yourself.

Keep your distance from freeways and busy roads

Southern California is experiencing a surge in home construction near freeways that is pushing more people into high-pollution zones. But just because state and local officials are allowing new housing there doesn't mean it is safe, health experts say.

When choosing a home, school or day care, aim for locations as far from the freeway as possible.

Avoid sites within 500 feet - where California air quality regulators warn against building - or even 1,000 feet. That's where traffic pollution is generally highest, along with rates of asthma, cancer, heart attacks, strokes, reduced lung function, pre-term births and a growing list of other health problems.

See how far you live from the nearest freeway "

Also avoid living near major roads - those carrying more than 100,000 vehicles a day - which, according to air quality regulators, can pose health risks similar to freeways. That includes stretches of some of Los Angeles' busiest boulevards such as Sepulveda, La Cienega and Wilshire.

Use filters, but know the limitations

If you have a central heating, air-conditioning or ventilation system, install high-efficiency air filters. They should be rated 13 or higher on the 16-point industry MERV scale (Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value) that measures how effectively they block tiny pollution particles.

Make sure to replace them on schedule, about every few months.

Most will not remove toxic exhaust gases such as benzene and 1,3-butadiene. To screen those out, you need more costly charcoal filters.

Also factor in the age of your building. Filters are less effective in older homes, which let in more pollutants, and work better in newer dwellings that seal off more outside air.

If you live in a new home near a freeway in Los Angeles or San Francisco, high-efficiency filters may already be required. And the California Energy Commission is moving to require MERV 13 air filtration in all newly constructed dwellings starting in 2020.

But those rules will do nothing to reduce pollution in existing homes, including those occupied by more than 1.2 million people in Southern California who already live within 500 feet of a freeway.

Don't have central air? Adding one or two stand-alone air-cleaning devices to your home can help reduce particle pollution levels, so long as you keep them running 24/7. But air cleaners are effective at lowering particle levels only in a single room, not an entire home. Make sure the model you choose is certified by California regulators.

Find physical barriers

If you can't avoid living near a freeway, some locations offer more protection than others.

It's better to live behind a sound wall, especially one with thick trees and plants extending above it. Such obstacles, though not designed to block vehicle emissions, can reduce pollution levels immediately downwind.

It's also preferable to live near a freeway that is elevated above or sits well below your home. That vertical separation can help disperse pollutants. At-grade freeways, where lanes sit at the same level as surrounding buildings, are worse because they put vehicle tailpipes right next to people's lungs.

If you live on a major boulevard, you're better off when there are buildings of varying heights, parks and other open spaces that allow allow exhaust pollutants to disperse up and away from traffic, state regulators say. Avoid "street canyons," blocks with masses of tall buildings that can trap pollution.

Avoid early morning exercise near traffic

Postpone outdoor exercise to later in the morning to dodge the spike in traffic pollution in the pre-sunrise hours. That's when stagnant weather conditions, caused by nighttime cooling, trap freeway pollution near the ground. That slows down the dispersal of emissions, allowing them to drift more than a mile downwind, compared to no more than 1,000 feet during the day.

Levels of ultrafine particles, nitric oxide and hydrocarbons are highest in the early morning, aided by a big injection of exhaust from morning rush hour. Those conditions usually break up once the sun has been up for a few hours and winds pick up again.

It's also better to keep your windows closed in the early morning hours. You may think it's safer to leave them open after traffic dies down at night, but recent research suggests the opposite.

Drive less, and use the 'recirculate' button

Spending time in a car on the freeway can expose you to pollution levels five to 10 times higher than surrounding areas.

Even with the windows up, you could be breathing up to 80% of the levels of pollution found in traffic if your vehicle's ventilation system is drawing in outside air.

So if you can, live closer to work, use public transit or take other steps to limit your driving time.

"That's where we still get a big, big share of our exposure, especially if you're driving very far in rush-hour traffic," said Scott Fruin, a professor of preventive medicine at USC. "If you can reduce that, it helps a lot."

Stay away from interchanges, intersections and other hot spots

The risk to your health can be compounded if you live near multiple pollution sources. Avoid living close to highway interchanges and freeway ramps, which regulators and scientists have identified as hot spots that can hit residents with twice as much as pollution.

Keep away from major intersections and stoplights, where vehicles spit out a lot of exhaust when drivers step on the gas, and copper dust and other toxic particles when they hit the brakes.

"There's basically a big cloud of fairly concentrated pollution when the light turns from red to green," Fruin said.

Also factor in whether you live in a smoggy area. If you live near a freeway in a community with higher smog levels, like the Inland Empire, you could get a double dose of dirty air from traffic emissions piling on top of regional pollution.

Avoid truck routes and the 'diesel death zone'

It's especially unhealthful to live near freeways and roads frequented by diesel trucks, which spew many times more harmful gases and particles than cars. Diesel particulate matter, carcinogen-laden soot that deposits deep in the lungs, is responsible for the bulk of the cancer risk from air pollution and more than 1,000 early deaths a year in California.

Experts are most concerned about people living near ports, warehouse distribution centers and other freight corridors. Asthma rates and cancer risk there can be so elevated that physicians have labeled it the "diesel death zone."

An air-monitoring station next to a truck-congested stretch of the 60 Freeway in Ontario had the highest levels of fine-particle pollution, or soot, of all near-roadway sites in the nation, according to 2015 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data. About 217,000 vehicles a day passed by in 2015, more than 29,000 of them trucks.

Be aware of the type of vehicles in your neighborhood

The kinds of vehicles traversing your neighborhood can have a big effect on how much pollution you breathe.

Paulson and other scientists have detected huge disparities among L.A. neighborhoods, with some of the lowest levels of traffic pollution in wealthier enclaves such as West Los Angeles, where the roads have more new cars with cleaner engines, and fewer trucks.

Levels of ultrafine particles, the tiny, short-lived particles scientists measure as an indicator of recently emitted exhaust, are several times higher over in the Eastside neighborhood of Boyle Heights, which in addition to being carved up by a freeway interchange has more diesel trucks and older, higher-polluting cars on its surface streets.

Clean the dust, but worry more about the pollution you can't see

The black road dust that deposits on the windows, shelves and patios of people living near traffic? If it's big enough to see, it probably can get into your mouth or nose, and not much farther than that.

Clean it up, especially if it's dark or sooty in color, said Fruin, the USC professor. "If you run your finger on your windowsill and it's black, that's a bad sign because it means you're getting a lot of diesel soot."

More important, soot can be an indication of traffic pollution you can't see but may be breathing in. Scientists are especially concerned about ultrafine particles, exhaust pollutants less than one-thousandth the width of a human hair. They're so tiny they can lodge deep in the lungs and move into bloodstream, where they may harm the heart, brain and other organs.

Ultrafine particles are suspected of causing some of the illnesses among people living near traffic, but more research is needed to say for certain.

Don't count on electric cars to eliminate the problem

Cars and trucks keep getting cleaner, but don't count on electric vehicles bringing an end to traffic-related health problems.

Switching to zero-emission vehicles only gets rid of tailpipe-generated pollution. It does nothing to reduce non-exhaust pollutants, including dust from brake pads and tires that contains toxic metals, rubber and other compounds that are kicked up into the air.

Scientists trying to pinpoint the most harmful agents in traffic pollution are just beginning to study the health effects of those non-tailpipe pollutants.

"The switch to electric vehicles will certainly reduce the public's exposure to engine-related emissions," said Ed Avol, a professor of preventive medicine at USC. "But this other kind of pollution generated by the frictional forces of tires and brakes and from lubricating oils is likely to remain in some form for years to come."
tony.barboza@latimes.com Times staff writer Jon Schleuss contributed to this report.

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Freeway pollution travels farther than we thought. Here's how to protect yourself

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Determining your exposure to traffic pollution isn't as simple as measuring your home's distance from the freeway. Even small variations in wind patterns, the direction of the nearest freeway, the types of vehicles and buildings around you and the time of day can have a big effect on your health.

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What is poverty? The US Census Bureau determines the Federal Poverty Level each year. The poverty level is based on the size of the household and the ages of family members. If a person or family's total income before taxes is less than the poverty level, the person or family are considered in poverty.

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Position Description - Download the full job description here!

The California Environmental Justice Alliance is hiring a social media intern to create powerful, timely, and culturally relevant social media and editorial copy to advance our environmental justice policy work. We're looking for a motivated, curious and dedicated communicator with a sense of humor and deep dedication to social, economic, racial ... Read More

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News - California Environmental Justice Alliance

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Position Description - Download the full job description here! The California Environmental Justice Alliance is hiring a social media intern to create powerful, timely, and culturally relevant social media and editorial copy to advance our environmental justice policy work. We're looking for a motivated, curious and dedicated communicator with a sense of humor and deep dedication to social, economic, racial ...

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Growing up in West Long Beach, Jan Victor F. Andasan remembers watching their younger brother take long breaths through a nebulizer to help him breathe easier. In the late nineties, Andasan, who was also an asthmatic and used an inhaler, had immigrated with their family from the Philippines to Southern California. In their predominantly working-class community of color, homes - including Andasan's - were bordered and bound by some of the biggest and busiest ports, freeways, and refineries in the country. As a child, Andasan was used to the nebulizer, to the railway yard next door, to the fire and black smoke of refinery flares. But some two decades later, as an organizer with East Yards Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ) - a community-based organization that works across Los Angeles' communities - they are still hearing the same stories.

"No matter how much the air has improved, it's still not healthy," they said. "People shouldn't be living next to this much pollution."

For communities such as West Long Beach, Wilmington, San Pedro, and Carson - around a 30-minute drive south of downtown Los Angeles - environmental injustice stems from the fossil fuel industry which, for impacted communities, is right on their doorstep. Alongside both the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles, there are five oil refineries within the 20-mile radius of Wilmington, two major shipping yards from which containers of goods are transported along the nearby I-710 freight corridor, and active neighborhood oil wells that are often within 1,500 feet of homes, schools, and hospitals.

These exposures have contributed to the Los Angeles-Long Beach area placing within the top 10 cities most polluted by PM2.5 - a type of particle pollution that can move deep into the lungs and spread into the bloodstream. The region is also the worst in the country for ozone pollution (or smog), according to a 2020 report from the American Lung Association. The oil industry is the largest source of volatile organic compound emissions, a group of chemicals that make up most of Los Angeles' smog. Research has linked both PM2.5 and ozone pollution to a range of health issues including cardiac and respiratory problems, stroke, cancer, and even dementia.

Among children, such as Andasan's younger brother, the impacts are especially egregious.

In the early 1990s, researchers at the University of Southern California began a longitudinal study tracking the long-term health effects of air pollution on children's respiratory health. The study has involved more than 12,000 children from 16 communities across Southern California, including the Long Beach area. Among other findings tying increased air pollution to asthma and respiratory infections, the study found that children living in communities with higher pollution levels - namely those from vehicle emissions and fossil fuels - had measurable lung damage, including reduced growth and poor function. However, researchers have also found improvements. A 2015 follow-up study found that as air quality improved across Los Angeles, so too has the lung and respiratory health of its children. While such improvements are often credited to science-based environmental policies - and rightly so - organizers, activists, and frontline communities have played huge a role in making those changes possible.

For decades, organizations such as EYCEJ and Communities For A Better Environment (CBE) have been organizing and working alongside the low-income communities of color most impacted by environmental justice issues. Since 2013, CBE has been the co-chair of STAND-LA, an environmental justice coalition working to end urban oil extraction. Around 500,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area live within a quarter mile of an active drilling site, exposing residents to a myriad of known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors and contributing to health impacts such as headaches, nosebleeds, nausea, and respiratory illness. For years, STAND-LA has been campaigning for the City of Los Angeles to institute a 2,500-foot safety buffer zone between active wells and communities. While the city released a report in 2019, recommending a 600-foot buffer for existing wells and a 1,500-foot buffer for new wells - falling short of the community's demands - the coalition has experienced a recent win.

In early December, the Los Angeles City Council's Environment, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice Committee passed a unanimous motion that directs the City Attorney to draft an ordinance declaring oil and gas extraction sites "non-conforming land uses." Advocates are optimistic that the motion is a step towards phasing out oil extraction across the region. At the core of this organizing, however, is the need to develop a plan for a just transition. Fossil fuel workers are at the front of the frontline, not only working across Los Angeles' refineries and oil drilling sites, but also living in those same impacted communities. Through their work as a community organizer, Andasan has heard stories of refinery workers retiring, only to pass a way a year or two later. Many workers, they said, understand why organizations such as EYCEJ lead protests and actions outside the city's fossil fuel sites. Yet, as working-class people of color, they've had to forgo their health to feed their families.

"Why can't we have clean air? Why can't we have jobs that don't impact our environment? Why do we have to choose?," Andasan said. "As my coworker says, we've been the canaries in the coalmine, breathing this air and telling people that it's bad. Now we need the rest of society to make a shift."

Want to help? MAKE A DIFFERENCE: DONATE TO THE EarthX Environmental Justice Fund

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Growing up in West Long Beach, Jan Victor F. Andasan remembers watching their younger brother take long breaths through a nebulizer to help him breathe easier. In the late nineties, Andasan, who was also an asthmatic and used an inhaler, had immigrated with their family from the Philippines to Southern California.

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EarthX convenes the world's largest environmental expo, conference and film festival, and is a member of IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature. EarthxTV, which launched in Fall 2020 is a web-based platform for balanced, inclusive environmental conversations, programs, emerging media & films. Founded in 2011 by environmentalist and businessman Trammell S. Crow, the Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization promotes environmental awareness and impact through conscious business, nonpartisan collaboration and community-driven sustainable solutions. Earthx2020 was held virtually in April and drew over 550,000 visitors worldwide. Visit www.EarthX.org or follow us @earthxorg on , , and .

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EarthX convenes the world's largest environmental expo, conference and film festival, and is a member of IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature. EarthxTV, which launched in Fall 2020 is a web-based platform for balanced, inclusive environmental conversations, programs, emerging media & films. Founded in 2011 by environmentalist and businessman Trammell S.

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International nonprofit EarthX is launching an Environmental Justice Fund. Recognizing the deep-rooted relationship between environmental racism and community issues such as pollution and climate change, EarthX will be promoting and raising funds for select organizations in the United States. The first beneficiaries are currently being onboarded as recipients of fundraising efforts by EarthX throughout its vast donor network.

Promoting Environmental Justice | EarthX is pleased to shed light on the stories of its inaugural communities located in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans and Houston through a commissioned series of articles spotlighting their regional environmental hazards and the work of the local organizations fighting for change. The articles have been published via 3BL Media releases and online at EarthxLeague, a members-based community forum focused on environmental solutions.

"Our mission is to leverage the power of the hundreds of thousands in our network that come together to advocate for our planet. But we cannot talk about our planet without discussing its effects on humanity," said Trammell S. Crow, founder of EarthX. "Connecting the dots of environmental injustice across our country will allow the voices of the small armies of those working to help their fellow human beings not only to be heard, but ultimately for the injustice to be rectified."

The first cohort of EarthX Environmental Justice Fund beneficiaries are:

The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition in Seattle, empowering and supporting a marginalized community living along a toxic river;

Residents of Gordon Plaza in New Orleans, fighting for relocation from toxic land;

RISE St. James, also in New Orleans, lobbying to stop the development of a petrochemical plant in an already polluted region;

Texas Health and Environment Alliance in Houston, diminishing the effects of toxic waste through advocacy and education;

East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice in Los Angeles, preparing community members to advocate for themselves during decision-making processes that impact their health and quality of life;

Communities for a Better Environment, also in Los Angeles, advocating for greener and healthier communities and environments, including ending urban oil extraction;

UPROSE in New York City, initiating the city's first cooperatively owned community solar project.

Making an Impact | EarthX partners with innovative organizations across multiple industries- from media, energy, technology, and many more- that are committed to sustainability and to making the world a cleaner, healthier, better place for now and the future. In 2021, in addition to the launch of its Environmental Justice Fund, EarthX has launched a Community Fund with Socialwyze, a vehicle funded by charitable contributions from citizens and businesses wanting to give back to their community-that is aimed at creating opportunities for underemployed people to work on local environmental public benefit work projects.

Learn more about the EarthX Environmental Justice Fund at https://earthx.org/environmental-justice/

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ABOUT EarthX
EarthX convenes the world's largest environmental expo, conference, film festival, and TV channel, and is a member of IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature. Founded in 2011 as Earth Day Dallas by environmentalist and businessman Trammell S. Crow, the Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization promotes environmental awareness and impact through conscious business, nonpartisan collaboration and community-driven sustainable solutions. In 2019, the April event drew over 177,000 attendees, 2,000 environmental leaders, and 750+ exhibitors. In 2020, the April virtual event drew over 570,000 live-stream views and reached 171 countries. After an initial web-based launch in September 2020, EarthxTV is now available as an OTT platform on streaming TV services, mobile devices and tablets for balanced, inclusive environmental conversations, programs, emerging media & films. Visit www.EarthX.org or follow us @earthxorg on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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EarthX Launches Environmental Justice Fund

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International nonprofit EarthX is launching an Environmental Justice Fund. Recognizing the deep-rooted relationship between environmental racism and community issues such as pollution and climate change, EarthX will be promoting and raising funds for select organizations in the United States. The first beneficiaries are currently being onboarded as recipients of fundraising efforts by EarthX throughout its vast donor network.

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Between the 110 and the 405  Environmental Injustice

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Between the 110 and the 405  Environmental Injustice

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When Olivia Barbour steps out of her home in South Los Angeles, she inhales a flurry of fumes from the heavy trucks passing along Imperial Highway on their daily routes, commuter traffic off the I-110 and I-105, and low flying airplanes on their way to LAX. She knows the air quality in her neighborhood isn't good for her health. As an asthma sufferer, she relies on respirators in multiple rooms of her home to cope with her symptoms. Living with not one, but multiple sources of air pollution is not out of the ordinary here, where nine percent of South LA residents live within 500 feet of a truck route, eight percent live within 500 feet of a manufacturing facility, and at least 51 active oil wells still operate in residential neighborhoods.¹ ² South LA is often talked about it terms of its economic issues such as high unemployment rates and lack of job training opportunities, and in the past much of SCOPE's work has focused on these issues. But over the years we've found that it's impossible to separate environmental injustice from economic injustice and we've seen from our residents' stories that these less conspicuous sources of pollution have undeniably created cumulative impacts on the health of South LA's predominantly low income, black, and brown residents.
The Numbers Don't Lie
Health statistics for South LA reflect the realities of our community's struggle to breathe clean air. In 2010, this area had one of the highest asthma emergency visit and hospitalization rates in the county. In comparison, the Westside had the lowest asthma emergency visit and hospitalization rates. ³ Furthermore, in 2009 the Health Service Plan Area encompassing South LA had the highest mortality rate in LA County for coronary heart disease, a disease which is also linked to exposure to air pollution.

When factoring in how South LA is literally enclosed by freeways and high traffic commercial corridors- the I-10 to the North, I-105 to the South, and I-405 to the West and the Alameda Corridor to the East- these statistics are not hard to believe. With a median income of $31,905, South LA households also face limited access to healthcare, healthy foods, and green space, which only serve to worsen their vulnerability to air pollution. ⁴ In fact, socioeconomic factors coupled with proximity to pollution have made it so that a shocking 74.2% of Los Angeles City Council District 8, 96.4% of Council District 9, and 64.7% of Council District 10, all districts which include South LA, are considered environmentally disadvantaged areas, by the state of California (using CalEnviroScreen 2.0). ⁵
A History of Environmental Racism
How did South LA, a predominantly black and brown low income community, become home to multiple sources of pollution? It was planned.

During the Great Migration, redlining and restrictive covenants limited housing options for black, Latino, and Asian communities in Los Angeles. These racist practices made it so that in the 1920s, people of color were barred from accessing about 95% of the city's housing stock. The remaining 5% that allowed black residents included areas surrounding Central Avenue, now considered Historic South Central. These racially unrestricted neighborhoods were often located near areas zoned for polluting industries. Meanwhile, white middle and upper class communities on the West Side, an area zoned primarily for residential uses, were largely protected from industrial pollution through the zoning code and decisions made by the city's planning entity. ⁶ As the city grew to become an industrial hub during World War II, more industrial manufacturing facilities were sited in neighborhoods adjacent to Historic South Central and white families began to flee the region that is today known as South and Southeast LA. ⁷

In the 1950s and 1960s, the selection of routes for major transportation corridors like the I-110 and I-10 further shaped South LA's environmental conditions. The chosen routes, which went through politically disenfranchised black and brown communities in South LA, Southeast LA, and Boyle Heights, didn't just contribute the air pollution community members endure today. The construction process also displaced entire communities and destroyed hundreds of homes, playing a part in creating overcrowded housing conditions that persist in South LA today. 8 ⁹
Moving Toward Environmental Justice
The intentionality with which an environmentally unjust South LA was created demands deliberateness in creating an environmentally equitable South LA moving forward. In order to begin remedying the historical burdens placed on our community, investment into and future planning of South LA must be grounded in environmental and economic justice. This means improving public transportation to reduce localized pollution, transitioning out harmful industries like neighborhood oil drilling, and pushing for community-driven climate investments with safeguards against displacement, such as the Transformative Climate Communities. This work also requires furthering quality job pathways in non-polluting industries and developing energy efficient, affordable housing so our communities can afford to stay in South LA. Above all, moving towards environmental justice means community members who cope with and contest the legacy of environmental racism everyday, must be the planners, spokespeople, and decision-makers in creating this change.

* * *

This is the first part of our South LA to Stay series, a blog and video project where we will be delving into the environmental and economic conditions South LA residents face everyday - from air pollution to fears of being pushed out by new development to lack of access to living wage jobs. Through this project, we hope to share stories of our residents' resiliency by highlighting why they have chosen to stay in South LA after decades of disinvestment and the changes they demand in environment, jobs, housing, and economic development so that our communities can be in South LA to Stay.

1"Health Atlas for the City of Los Angeles." City of Los Angeles. June 2013. http://planning.lacity.org/cwd/framwk/healthwellness/text/HealthAtlas.pdf
2"Urban Oil Sites." STAND LA. http://www.stand.la/drill-sites-in-la.html
3 "Health Atlas for the City of Los Angeles."
4 American Community Survey 2013
5 "Climate Equity from the Grassroots." SCOPE. April 2017. http://scopela.org/climate-equity-from-the-grassroots/
6 Kurashige, Scott. The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2010. 26.
7 Davis, Mike. City of Quartz-excavating the future in Los Angeles. London: Pimlico. 1998. 152.
8 Davis, Mike.
9 Sides, Josh. L.A. city limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006

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Between the 110 and the 405: Environmental Injustice in South Los Angeles

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When Olivia Barbour steps out of her home in South Los Angeles, she inhales a flurry of fumes from the heavy trucks passing along Imperial Highway on their daily routes, commuter traffic off the I-110 and I-105, and low flying airplanes on their way to LAX.

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Global warming is local, and Liberty Hill leads the resistance.

In a city famous for traffic and smog, it's no secret that pollution is a serious problem for Los Angeles. But for low income communities and communities of color, the dangers of exposure to environmental hazards are most severe. People who live in "environmental justice neighborhoods" combining economic disadvantage and dangerous pollution are at a greater risk for cancer and other health consequences than residents of affluent areas. For Liberty Hill, environmental justice is a cornerstone of social justice. We currently have three programs in place to fight for a safer, healthier, greener L.A.

Liberty Hill is a founding member of Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling (STAND-LA), a coalition of community organizations on the frontlines of ending oil drilling in residential neighborhoods. We provide grants and other support to STAND LA member organizations for their community organizing and public education activities. For more on Liberty Hill's support for Angelenos impacted by urban oil extraction, see our 2015 report Drilling Down: the Community Consequences of Expanded Oil Drilling and Development, a detailed study on the issue.

On Earth Day, 2016, Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a groundbreaking environmental justice policy known as Clean Up Green Up. Beginning with the pilot neighborhoods of Boyle Heights, Pacoima and Wilmington, Clean Up Green Up establishes green zones in toxic hotspot communities overburdened by pollution, implementing solutions to reduce air pollution while helping businesses adopt greener practices. It was a big day for Liberty Hill and Clean Up Green Up Coalition partners, Communities for a Better Environment, Pacoima Beautiful, Union de Vecinos and Coalition for a Safe Environment, who began planting seeds for the policy almost ten years ago. You can read the community-researched report Hidden Hazards: A Call to Action for Healthy Livable Communities or watch the Earth Day Enviro Victory! video on this page to see the signing. You can read our Guide to Green, a directory of programs and technical assistance for businesses wanting to go greener.

Assuring that Los Angeles' most disadvantaged communities are at the forefront of California's efforts to address global warming is another key focus for Liberty Hill. In collaboration with the California Climate Equity Coalition which won an historic commitment to invest 25% of the State's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds to benefit polluted and poor neighborhoods, we work to keep L.A.'s grassroots organizations informed of these programs and engaged in making them more effective. Read our first report on "Advantaging Communities" that argues for these funds to provide significant co-benefits and community engagement, and stand by for our upcoming report on "Green Zones and Grassroots" (November 2016) that analyzes how California's climate investments are currently spent in L.A. County.

Is an Active Oil Well Your Neighbor?

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In a city famous for traffic and smog, it's no secret that pollution is a serious problem for Los Angeles. But for low income communities and communities of color, the dangers of exposure to environmental hazards are most severe.

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UCLA Institue of the Environment and Sustainability 

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UCLA Institue of the Environment and Sustainability 

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Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA

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Story

Nicki Aviel

In a new paper, UCLA researcher Jon Christensen investigated how it prioritized investments in disadvantaged communities. Christensen wanted to know if Prop. 1 was living up to its goals. We...

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Story Nicki Aviel In a new paper, UCLA researcher Jon Christensen investigated how it prioritized investments in disadvantaged communities. Christensen wanted to know if Prop. 1 was living up to its goals. We...

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In the city of Maywood, California, no home is further than half a mile away from heavy industry. Felipe Aguirre, a 25-year resident of the city and its former mayor, drives past Heliotrope elementary school. Just a block later, he waves at an unassuming one-story building that makes electronic parts. "Steam is coming out of here six nights a week," Aguirre says.

This isn't the same benign steam that rises from fresh pasta - it's scalding water vapor laced with heavy metals, including hexavalent chromium.

We drive down East 52nd Place past the grassy Maywood Park and infinite rows of densely packed homes adjacent to metal foundries and chemical plants. Aguirre points out the remnants of one of Maywood's most infamous disasters, a chemical fire that erupted from an e-waste recycling plant in 2016, then spread into backyards and burned down homes. The plant now sits vacant, scarred with black spots where fire licked the ground.

The sky turns hot pink and orange and the remaining light is fading fast. Some of the same pollutants that put Maywood in the 98th percentile for cancer risk in the state create beautiful sunsets.

The Office of Environment Health Hazard Assessment ranks Maywood in the 97th percentile for toxic releases - pollutants spewed into the air, such as the metal-laden steam that comes out of the electronic parts factory. In the same assessment, the office reported that 60 percent of land in the southeast L.A. district, encompassing Maywood and its neighbors, Commerce and Vernon, is used for industrial purposes. Just nine percent of the land in those three cities is residential. Ninety-six percent of Maywood residents are Latinx and the city's poverty rate is in the 87th percentile for California.

In Maywood, heavy industry crowds the same blocks residents live on - next door to schools, parks, restaurants and neighborhoods. These businesses operate in cities already grappling with deep-rooted inequity - often their residents are low-income, people of color. Maywood exemplifies a major problem in California: when regulators permit how many pounds of toxics each polluter can release into the air, they look at each facility individually, without acknowledging that multiple emitting facilities clustered together creates cumulative and severe health impacts for nearby residents.

No one is measuring the total amount of pollution released into the air in cities like Maywood that have a high concentration of heavy industry. As a result, residents suffer devastating health effects such as cancer from breathing in daily doses of metals and other toxics.

Now, Aguirre and other environmental, health and justice activists are trying to get the state to act by forcing heavy industry to stop emitting toxics into the air.

No safe level of exposure

Aguirre's fight for clean air begins with a chemical called hexavalent chromium, or hex chrome. It's released into the air through chrome plating - a process used to create a stainless-steel look and protect metal parts from corrosion. It works like this: metal parts are placed in an electrically charged bath of salts and chromium. An electric current runs through the bath, causing chromium to deposit on the metal. But the process also generates a waste gas called hexavalent chromium, which rises out of the bath and into the air.

Cutlery, sink faucets, chrome bumpers and even the engine of NASA spaceships look shiny and sleek because of the chrome plating process, which is used by metal foundries, welding shops, specialty automobile and aerospace parts manufacturers. The nuts and bolts that hold cell phones and televisions together are often plated with chrome, too. High-temperature metal welding and grinding also produce hex chrome fumes that raft onto dust particles.

Hex chrome exposure is linked to lung and nasal cancers, neurodevelopmental disorders, asthma, infertility, and kidney and liver damage. A 2017 EPA report on hex chrome published stated that "Hexavalent chromium is highly toxic, even at low mass concentrations and emissions." In a 2006 report, the California Air Resources Board ranked hexavalent chromium as the second most potent human carcinogen.

That report declared that employees at chrome plating facilities were at risk of developing cancer due to hex chrome exposure. Regulators found in that same report that 43 percent of plating facilities were located within a half miles of residential areas, often schools.

43 percent of plating facilities were located within a half miles of residential areas, often schools.

The report maintains that hex chrome does not cause cancer in communities surrounding chrome plating plants. But more recent research shows communities who breathe in hex chrome polluted air face higher risks for health issues.

In 2015, UC San Francisco researchers reported that pregnant women in Willits, California who were exposed to hex chrome emissions from a factory had babies with elevated levels of birth defects, including cleft lips and nervous system and chromosomal disorders. Compared to women who weren't exposed to hex chrome, these women also had higher levels of miscarriages and premature births. Hex chrome and other carcinogenic metals can cross the blood-brain barrier and may be passed down through DNA from parent to child.

"We don't think there's a safe level of exposure to carcinogens," says Amy Kyle, an emeritus researcher and professor of public health at UC Berkeley.

Kyle also points outs that when regulators permit facilities to release toxics into the air, they're relying on health studies that estimate residents' exposure to the pollution over a lifetime.

But Kyle says that even short-term exposures could harm children: "During critical periods of development, health effects could occur from much lower net doses."

Jane Williams, an air pollution expert and executive director of the environmental group California Communities Against Toxics, has documented what she calls the effects of hex chrome and other heavy metals in communities. She began her work on airborne metal contamination in Paramount, a town 10 miles away from Maywood. In 2013 Williams got a call from Paramount community members concerned with how many children at Lincoln Elementary, located hundreds of feet away from several metal processing facilities, were being diagnosed with cancer. So Williams and her team investigated, taking hair samples from residents of all ages.

What Williams found startled her: she saw alarmingly high levels of metal contamination in children. One two-year-old girl had the same levels of arsenic, uranium, beryllium and titanium in her hair as adult industrial workers. She thinks the high levels of metal in Paramount are to blame: "When I have a two-year old and she looks like she's working in a metal smelter, that's a problem," Williams says.

"When I have a two-year old and she looks like she's working in a metal smelter, that's a problem," Williams says.

Williams worked with expert geologists and toxicologists to discover the source of the high rates of metals in Paramount's children. They tested metal levels in residents' homes and yards, and found titanium, nickel, beryllium and aluminum in soil and dust. In 2014, she took the data to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, who regulates air quality in Los Angeles County. The agency was so alarmed by the data that they installed metal monitors in residential areas adjacent to heavy industry to track the air quality in Paramount. There, they detected high levels of hex chrome and nickel.

The results surprised both Williams and regulators. In California, business must apply for permits that allow them to release hex chrome into the air. They're also required to annually give local regulators an estimate of how many pounds of hex chrome they emit. But there were too few permitted hex chrome emitters in Paramount to account for the high levels of metal contamination detected there. So, Williams and her team combed through maps, the Yellow Pages and even Yelp to identify all of the business in Paramount that might generate airborne hex chrome by welding, grinding or plating. Then, Williams checked which of these businesses were already reporting emissions and which weren't. By triangulating these business addresses with the air monitoring data, Williams identified 100 businesses who were likely emitting hex chrome into the air illegally.

In December 2017, Williams revealed her findings to regulators. They responded by creating one of the most comprehensive hexavalent chromium monitoring programs in the U.S. Regulators inspected companies in Paramount to determine which ones were emitting hex chrome. Then, they sampled contamination levels around the city by installing hex chrome monitors and setting out glass to collect hex chrome dust. They found that some companies were grinding chromium outside - which was perfectly legal at the time - releasing hex chrome directly into the air. Regulators also found hex chrome levels at the Lincoln Elementary playground that were 26 times higher than the legally acceptable background limit.

At the urging of the community, Williams, and California Communities Against Toxics, the District passed the first rule banning outdoor metal grinding operations. The rule required facilities to bring grinding inside.

Although hex chrome levels decreased a result, higher-than-average concentrations of the metal in Paramount's air persist. Williams thinks that's because regulators still haven't forced hex chrome emitting facilities to completely seal off their emissions: they can still operate without using an air filter, and with windows and doors open. She's still trying to convince the South Coast Air Quality Management District to implement zero emission rules in Paramount.

Taking on a toxic burden

Williams's investigation in Paramount exposed that people who live near multiple metal emitting facilities face disproportionate health impacts. In other cities like Maywood, how much hex chrome, and other carcinogenic metals like nickel and beryllium are spewed into the air remains unknown.

The federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration requires chroming facilities to measure how much hex chrome their workers are breathing in. But there is no state-wide emission limit based on how much hex chrome a resident can breathe in over time without suffering health problems. Chrome plating facilities must keep the level of hex chrome inside their buildings below a limit, but the amount of hex chrome facilities can emit into the air varies widely across the state.

The EPA's Clean Air Act sets health-based emissions standards for nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, ozone and lead. So the California Air Resources Board and local air districts are required to monitor these six pollutants. State law doesn't require regulators to measure carcinogenic metals other than lead, such as hex chrome, nickel and beryllium in the air. This is true even in places such as Maywood, where chrome platers operate next door to schools and homes.

And regulating one business at a time misses the cumulative impact that can occur when a city has a high concentration of emitters. Amy Kyle says that's a flawed approach, similar to designing a bridge that is only strong enough to support one car at a time. "You wouldn't build a bridge and assume only one car will drive on it. It's the same thing assuming any one person is exposed to just one toxic source in these neighborhoods."

Lawmakers seem to recognize that cumulative exposures to toxics is a problem: in 2018, the state legislature passed a bill called AB-617 that aims to reduce neighborhood-level air pollution emissions in ten of the most contaminated areas in the state. Andrea Polidori, who manages the monitoring programs for the South Coast Air Quality District, says the bill was a "direct result" of the hex chrome monitoring effort that Williams and the South Coast Air Quality Management led in Paramount.

But Williams says regulators aren't on track to fulfill a promise of reducing air pollution. Funding from the bill isn't being put toward investing in zero emission technology, like HEPA filters, that would eliminate hex chrome emissions from escaping into surrounding communities. And she wants state regulators to use more stringent methods to monitor metal levels.

But the California Air Resources Board and industry groups are resisting Williams' efforts. Brian Leiker, who heads the Metal Finishing Association of Southern California, says chrome platers "have to comply with some of the toughest regulations in the world - we've reduced hex chrome substantially over the last 20 years." He's concerned that hex chrome monitoring wouldn't accurately capture where emissions are coming from, so one business could be at fault for another business who's emitting hex chrome across the street.

"It's challenging to have one facility be responsible for another facility's emissions," agrees Richard Kreiger, a manager with the risk reduction branch at the California Air Resources Board. "I don't know if that's something we have figured out."

But Williams and the residents of cities such as Maywood say that overlooks their reality. There are over 200 licensed chrome plating facilities in California, many of them next to people's homes and schools. Low-income residents in these communities don't have many options.

Still, Felipe Aguirre trusts in Williams' tenacity to force the state to address the issue of cumulative exposures. He's known her for over twenty years. "She has the most ability to make change in the state of California for environmental justice, across the board," he says.

They both will continue to their fights to reshape the way California regulates pollution in communities with disproportionate levels of industry.

"It's very difficult to tell people that a lot of these problems are because we live next to where their jobs are," Aguirre explained. "How they live, how they survive, how they contribute to the American economy is killing them, literally."

Aguirre thinks that regulators need to devise new rules that restrict the total burden of pollution in a city, rather than measuring individual sources of contamination. Until then, chrome platers in Maywood will continue to emit toxic steam, a block away from an elementary school, a preschool, and rows of densely packed homes.

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Metal-Polluted air Puts L.A. Residents at Risk - UCSC Science Notes

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In the city of Maywood, California, no home is further than half a mile away from heavy industry. Felipe Aguirre, a 25-year resident of the city and its former mayor, drives past Heliotrope elementary school. Just a block later, he waves at an unassuming one-story building that makes electronic parts.

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Ships visiting Southern California's bustling ports are poised to become the region's largest source of smog-causing pollutants in coming years, one reason state regulators want to reduce emissions from thousands more of them.

Air quality officials want to expand the number of ships that, while docked, must either shut down their auxiliary engines and plug into shore power or scrub their exhaust by hooking up to machines known as bonnets or "socks on a stack."

But some neighbors of the ports say the California Air Resources Board is not moving fast enough to cut a rising source of pollution. Some also fear that the shipping industry and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will use their clout to weaken the proposed restrictions, which the Air Resources Board will decide on in the first half of the year.

"We need relief; it's just that simple," said Theral Golden of the West Long Beach Assn., a neighborhood group that has long fought for cleaner air in a community that is among the hardest hit by port pollution.

At stake in the battle are billions of dollars in potential costs at the nation's busiest seaport, which handles roughly 40% of U.S. imports and remains overwhelmingly powered by diesel-spewing trucks, ships, locomotives and cargo-handling equipment. The volume of shipments moving through the two ports has more than tripled since the mid-1990s, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But the growth in shipping activity also comes at the cost of people's health across Southern California, especially near the ports. Despite dramatic emissions cuts by the ports in recent years, neighboring communities such as Wilmington, San Pedro and West Long Beach still have the region's highest cancer risk from air pollution and higher rates of asthma compared with the rest of the state.

"Right now we have larger ships carrying more cargo, and they're bringing more pollutants," Golden added. "We understand that cargo has to move and goods have got to be moved. But it should not be at the expense of our health, and at the expense of our children."

It was more than a decade ago when the L.A.-Long Beach ports pioneered a major effort to clean up their operations by phasing out their dirtiest sources of diesel pollution. State regulations over the last six years have forced increasing numbers of container ships, refrigerated cargo ships and cruise ships docked at the largest ports to plug in or to connect to emissions controls. But the rules do not apply to more than half of the 8,000 ocean vessels visiting California each year, according to figures provided by the Air Resources Board.

The Air Resources Board proposes to extend such restrictions to additional ports, ship calls and and vessel types, including tankers and roll-on/roll-off ships, which carry cars, trucks and other vehicles. The rules would increase the number of ship visits subject to the rules from about 43% today to about 71% by 2029, air board figures show.

Largest polluters in L.A.

Some of the vessels at issue are so large they are like floating warehouses or small cities. If not plugged in while docked, they must keep their engines and boilers running. In one 24-hour period in port, a single cruise ship can burn enough fuel oil to equal the pollution from 10,000 cars, according to air quality officials.

But plugging in such hulking, power-hungry vessels isn't simple.

On a recent weekday, diesel exhaust billowed skyward from the stacks of the Yang Ming Movement, a fully loaded container ship that rumbled into the Port of Los Angeles after its journey from Shanghai.

It took half a dozen workers and two hours to connect the 960-foot-long ship to the electrical grid. Crew members slowly lowered electric cables as thick as fire hoses down the side of the vessel to longshoremen who attached the red and blue plugs, weighing 30 pounds each, into receptacles on the dock. Port electrical workers flipped two giant switches so the ship could begin drawing from the grid.

"She will run on electricity from shore power for the entire stay," says Bill Schopp, director of marine operations for TraPac terminal in Wilmington, where the vessel docked for nearly five days.

California made early gains at its ports more than a decade ago with rules that required vessels to switch to cleaner low-sulfur fuel near the shore. But in recent years, progress in fighting air pollution at the L.A.-Long Beach ports has waned, with some emissions creeping upward. In 2018, emissions of diesel particulate matter rose slightly at the Port of L.A. and has ticked up the last two years at the Port of Long Beach, according to their inventories.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District projects that by 2023 oceangoing ships will surpass heavy-duty diesel trucks to become Southern California's largest source of smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution.

Amid concerns about backsliding on cleaning the air, leaders in L.A. and Long Beach in 2017 decided to overhaul their joint Clean Air Action Plan with an updated, $14-billion blueprint that seeks to switch to zero-emission cargo-handling equipment by 2030, and zero-emission trucks by 2035. The same year, the Air Resources Board instructed its staff to draft new shore power rules for ships that achieve "up to 100% compliance by 2030."

The state predicts big improvements in health and air quality from strengthening the rules. By 2031, the rules are expected to slash emissions of diesel particulate matter and nitrogen oxides from docked ships by about half and reduce their contribution to cancer risk around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by 55% over the same period.

Community groups say they shouldn't have to wait that long for those health benefits and want regulators to adopt a more aggressive timeline.

"Ships are massive polluters, and they have the most room to improve," said Peter Warren of the San Pedro & Peninsula Homeowners Coalition. "They are also the right target to achieve the greatest gains because their movements are tracked and they can't hide, and there are solutions to make them cleaner."

Who pays?

Environmentalists and community groups in some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods argue the public has long paid for port-related emissions with their health. But the shipping industry has fought against tougher rules, which they argue would be too costly for the amount of pollution reduced.

"We don't think we need a brand-new rule," Mike Jacob, a vice president for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn., which represents ocean carriers and marine terminal operators, told state regulators at a hearing in Oakland last month. "We think we need to be making small administrative tweaks to a successful rule and make it even better."

Outfitting one ship with the equipment to plug into shore power costs $1 million or more, according to industry representatives. They argue this price tag isn't cost effective for ships that rarely make stops in California; they say they'll need more shore-based emissions capture systems to comply.

The L.A. and Long Beach ports, which have spent hundreds of millions of dollars building outlets and other electrical infrastructure since they introduced shore power in the mid-2000s, have echoed industry concerns.

Heather Tomley, managing director of planning and environmental affairs for the Port of Long Beach, said the port supported moving forward with additional emissions controls. "But we also need to be realistic about the timeline that it will take for these technologies to develop and be proven, and for the infrastructure to be installed," she said.

The state estimates it would cost industry $2.16 billion over the next decade to comply with the new rules, resulting in health benefits valued at $2.25 billion, including the avoidance of hundreds of early deaths from air pollution. Air Resources Board staff plan to bring the final regulations to the 16-member panel for a final hearing in the spring.

Diane Takvorian, an Air Resources Board member who directs the Environmental Health Coalition based in the San Diego area, says further reductions from ships in port are critical because they are among the biggest pollution sources affecting the state's most disadvantaged communities.

"This is a historic step and a big step," she said.

Enforcement wanted

In harbor-area communities, neighborhood groups that want tougher pollution restrictions remain skeptical that new rules will be backed up with tougher enforcement, pointing to a history of noncompliance with ship plug-in requirements at the Port of L.A.

In 2015, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the port had privately rolled back pollution-cutting measures at the China Shipping terminal, giving the company permission to violate shore power requirements starting in 2009. In 2016 the port released an audit showing it also failed to meet pollution-reduction requirements at the TraPac terminal, including mandates that ships plug into shore-based electricity.

Last month, the Air Resources Board announced Shanghai-based shipping giant COSCO Container Lines had paid $965,000 in penalties after a state audit of its fleet's visits to the ports of L.A., Long Beach and Oakland discovered 2,600 violations of the shore power rules from 2014 to 2017.

"This is a resistant industry and it needs policing and auditing," said Warren of the San Pedro & Peninsula Homeowners Coalition. "If you're going to make the rules stricter, you need to make the enforcement stronger too."

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Port ships are becoming L.A.'s biggest polluters. Will California force a cleanup?

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Ships visiting Southern California's bustling ports are poised to become the region's largest source of smog-causing pollutants in coming years, one reason state regulators want to reduce emissions from thousands more of them.

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Health Atlas for the City of Los Angeles

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Health Atlas for the City of Los Angeles

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Coalition for Environmenmental Health and Justice (CEHAJ) | Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles

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How will expanding the I-710 freeway impact the health of nearby residents? In an Op-Ed published in EGP News, Dr. Felix L. Nuñez, MD, MPH, expresses his concern that freeway expansion will induce traffic and lead to negative health outcome in Bell Gardens, where he serves as the Chief Medical Officer of a community health center.

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Coalition for Environmenmental Health and Justice (CEHAJ) | Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles

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How will expanding the I-710 freeway impact the health of nearby residents? In an Op-Ed published in EGP News, Dr. Felix L. Nuñez, MD, MPH, expresses his concern that freeway expansion will induce traffic and lead to negative health outcome in Bell Gardens, where he serves as the Chief Medical Officer of a community health center.

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Seven garbage hauling companies were awarded Los Angeles contracts potentially totaling $3.5 billion Friday, completing one of the final steps as the city converts from a competition for customers to one that grants each company an exclusive business franchise zone. ...

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Don't Waste LA | Clean Air, Green Jobs, and Recycling for AllDon't Waste LA | Clean Air, Green Jobs, and Recycling for All

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Seven garbage hauling companies were awarded Los Angeles contracts potentially totaling $3.5 billion Friday, completing one of the final steps as the city converts from a competition for customers to one that grants each company an exclusive business franchise zone. ...

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Climate migrants fleeing Central America

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Climate migrants fleeing Central America

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CIUDAD JUÁREZ - For Deivis Nahum Espina, a tragedy fell from the sky - severe floods inundated his village in Honduras, destroying crops, homes and causing landslides.

"It was like in the Bible," Espina, 31, said as he pointed to the sky and described the devastation caused by the hurricanes Eta and Iota last year. That cataclysm prompted him to leave Honduras with his two children, sister and nephews. "We came walking and, at times, in buses. It was like two months of travel," he said.

Espina is among the growing number of Central Americans who have recently fled the region after destructive storms and a growing climate crisis - only to find themselves in a migratory limbo.

On March 15, Espina crossed the border through the Mexican town of Reynosa and surrendered to authorities in the United States, seeking asylum. But he and his family were instead sent back to Mexico under a rule put in place during the Trump administration.

He was returned to Mexico without the possibility of requesting asylum at the U.S. border because of Title 42, a rule put in place by former President Donald Trump on March 21 of last year to prevent the entry of people crossing the border during the coronavirus pandemic. More than 62,000 people have been denied entry under the rule as of January.

Espina and his family were taken to the State Council for Population and Attention to Migrants, known by its Spanish acronym COESPO, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua in Ciudad Juárez. He would repeatedly ask where he was, as if he believed that it had all been a mistake.

"We have many people who were returnees and are in a very inconvenient situation because they don't want to request an international protection measure to get refuge in Mexico, and they don't want to return to their countries, so they wait to see if they can cross," Enrique Valenzuela, a COESPO coordinator, said.

From his office, Valenzuela can see people crossing the Paso del Norte International Bridge. On many occasions, he leaves his meetings hastily as he watches the long lines of people moving slowly down the pedestrian crossing. After President Joe Biden took office, authorities from Chihuahua noticed an increase in the number of migrants being turned away from various border access points. Now, they see the arrival of about 80 to 100 people a day.

"They are in a kind of immigration limbo," Valenzuela said. "It's a bureaucratic labyrinth that generates a lot of anguish."

Last year, amid the pandemic, Central Americans endured the formation of 30 cyclones that devastated entire regions and fueled the need to emigrate.

In Honduras, Eta and Iota left more than 250,000 people last year with hardly any possibility of accessing services of any kind, including health.

About 8 million people now suffer from food insecurity due to the effects of climate change throughout the Dry Corridor - a 1,000-mile-long geographic zone that runs through the Mexican state of Chiapas and stretches across Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua - according to a report by the organizations Action Against Hunger, Oxfam, COOPI, Trócaire and We World-GVC.

"Some migrants from the region are beginning to identify the impacts of hurricanes as reasons for migration. There is a good chance that migration, first internal and perhaps international, will also increase," Pablo Escribano, a specialist at the International Organization for Migration, said.

In November, Francisco Ardeñal, director of the National Center for Atmospheric, Oceanographic and Seismic Studies, began to realize that Honduras was experiencing an unprecedented climate crisis.

"It was extraordinary because we had never had two cyclones so close together since the meteorological records began in 1951," he said. "There's a combination of the current environmental deterioration and the degree of vulnerability of people who have built near rivers and in risky areas."

As a result of Eta, Honduras saw two months' worth of rainfall in just one week - effectively causing rivers to overflow and floods that later worsened with Iota.

"One thing that links these phenomena to global warming is that, in less than 36 hours, they rapidly evolved from a tropical depression to Category 4 hurricanes. This has not been seen before and is linked to the rise in the surface temperature of the sea ​​and higher amounts of latent heat that is related to climate change and the emergence of more cyclones in the region," Ardeñal said.

Marco Antonio Suazo, a consultant for Project HOPE, an international global health organization, said that "the impact has been tremendous."

"There are still homes destroyed, areas full of mud from the floods," he said. "Many people have also lost their jobs due to the pandemic."

"Now we see almost entire families where fathers, mothers and children mobilize to pursue a dream but don't know the risks, their health conditions or the language."

Estefany Suazo, who lives in the Honduran town of El Calán, told Noticias Telemundo last month she's considering "leaving with my two girls, because the truth here is I cannot do nothing."

About 34 people emigrate every hour from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to a report published in February by the Franciscan Network for Migrants.

The countries are plagued by violence, poverty and political instability, but "the new faces" of this exodus are "climate migrants" from Honduras who leave after being left "homeless, jobless and without crops," said Rubén Figueroa, a member of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, a nongovernmental organization that monitors the displacement of people in southern Mexico.

Figueroa predicts that the exodus will only increase and reach pre-pandemic levels. "This worries us because migrants are very vulnerable to human trafficking networks and are exposed to many dangers."

This is the case of Dagoberto Pineda. He lost his job working at a banana plantation after Eta destroyed his village in Honduras. Without a job or the possibility of rebuilding his destroyed home, he watched others leave with smugglers - sometimes called "coyotes" - for the U.S. and decided that it was also his time to leave.

"I have nothing left, so I decided to take a risk. But I didn't accomplish anything," he said March 17. Pineda spent five days in a U.S. immigration facility before being sent to Ciudad Juárez. "They told us they were going to help us but they didn't give us anything," he said about the U.S. facility, speaking from the COESPO headquarters. "They took away our things, clothes and everything because they said it was garbage."

A few feet away, Alba Juárez Méndez burst into tears. She said she liked her life in the village of Sóchel, in the Guatemalan province of San Marcos. She didn't have luxury but she felt a sense of security, had a roof over her head and was able to feed her children with the potatoes, corn and beans she grew.

Then the heavy rains came and she said her house started leaking. Between tears and laughter, she said, sometimes it felt like it was raining more inside her house than outside. After the hurricane, they lost running water.

"We were left without work and then the harvest was over. We couldn't stay," she said.

She hoped to be reunited with her uncle, who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, because the 300 quetzals ($39) she earned cleaning houses and washing clothes monthly weren't enough to take care of Yareli, her 2-year-old daughter, amidst the devastation left by the storms. So, she left Guatemala a few months ago, walking and hitchhiking until she reached Ciudad Juárez.

"I did not know anything. I arrived at the bridge and the Mexican immigration didn't let me pass. They said that the border is closed due to the pandemic and they did not even give me a shelter," she said.

Juárez Méndez says she left the Mexican facility on the night of March 17, when she was told there was no room for her to stay in any of the 18 shelters in Ciudad Juarez. She walked for an hour, without money, through the dusty streets of the border town until a woman was moved and offered to give her accommodation in exchange for work.

"And so, we are in Mexico, we cannot return, we are defeated there," she said. "I hope the president lets us pass, we don't want to steal anything but have a future, build a house, have electricity, water and studies for my daughter."

Her voice breaks when she remembers what happened Jan. 22 when 19 people, including 13 Guatemalan migrants who were mostly fleeing violence and economic hardships the pandemic worsened in Central America, were shot and burned in Tamaulipas in what's considered one of the bloodiest massacres perpetrated against migrants in recent years.

"I'm afraid that that could happen to me but, when one has a need, you leave, no matter what, because there's no other option," she said.
Raúl Torres, a Noticias Telemundo correspondent, contributed to this report. An earlier version of this article was originally published in Noticias Telemundo.

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'We're defeated': Climate migrants fleeing storm-stricken Central America struggle to find refuge

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CIUDAD JUÁREZ - For Deivis Nahum Espina, a tragedy fell from the sky - severe floods inundated his village in Honduras, destroying crops, homes and causing landslides. "It was like in the Bible," Espina, 31, said as he pointed to the sky and described the devastation caused by the hurricanes Eta and Iota last year.

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LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The city of Los Angeles has the nation's worst air quality when it comes to ozone pollution, and the counties that surround it are some of the worst nationally as well, according to a new study.

The American Lung Association just released its annual State of the Air report, which finds that more than 40% of Americans live within areas with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. Southern Californians fared especially bad.

Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties all received F grades for particle and ozone pollution, which can lead to serious health problems for the people who live in those areas.

"There's a wide range of health impacts," said Will Barrett, the senior director of Clean Air Advocacy for the Lung Association. "Those can range from minor irritations and coughing and wheezing to asthma attacks. There's also heart issues, heart attacks and strokes. Breathing particle pollution can even cause lung cancer and both ozone and particle pollution can contribute to premature death."

Protecting our air is the responsibility of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The failing grades for its territories may be frustrating for the AQMD, but not surprising.

"We know we have some of the worst air quality in the country," said Sarah Rees, a deputy executive officer for the AQMD. "But we know we've also made tremendous progress over the years as well."

The improvements in air quality she is referring to are included in the Lung Association report, and they are dramatic, but Southern California's starting point was so bad when the Lung Association began issuing its State of the Air reports 21 years ago that even after great progress, the air quality here still ranks toward the bottom of the states.

Why? Climate change means Southern Californians have to deal with more extreme heat days and larger, more frequent wildfires, both of which multiply our ozone problems.

Then, you have to factor in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Rees says a staggering 40% of all U.S. imports are funneled through our ports.

"Those imports come through our ports, they then are trucked through the region to warehouses, they go out by rail, so all of that equipment, all those engines, are really contributing to the air pollution that we see," she told Eyewitness News.

Barrett of the Lung Association says the key is to focus on cutting emissions in transportation.

"We know we need to cut down on the combustion of fossil fuels in the transportation sector, really speed the transition to zero emission technologies and not just for passenger vehicles, but medium and heavy duty vehicles as well as port equipment," said Barrett.

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Los Angeles has nation's worst air quality; SoCal counties get F grades for ozone pollution

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LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The city of Los Angeles has the nation's worst air quality when it comes to ozone pollution, and the counties that surround it are some of the worst nationally as well, according to a new study.

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Extreme weather to create huge waves of migrants

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Extreme weather to create huge waves of migrants

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The National Intelligence Council sponsors workshops and research with nongovernmental experts to gain knowledge and insights and to sharpen debate on critical issues. The views expressed in this report do not reflect official US Government positions.
Executive Summary (excerpt)

Mexico, the countries of the Caribbean, and Central America examined in this report are at risk from the impacts of climate change in the next 20 years because they will be exposed to a greater range of climate changes and have a relatively weak adaptive capacity when compared to the world at large. Within the region, climate change is evident in increased temperatures, changes in precipitation, and sea level rise-and perhaps in weather variability and natural disaster events. Countries in this report include Belize, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama; Puerto Rico is also discussed.

Steady increases within the region in the number of extreme weather events-hurricanes, storms, and droughts-and their effect on infrastructure, public health, loss of human life and agriculture may be attributable to climate change. The countries reviewed do not yet have a full understanding of the potential impacts of future climatic changes and are not prepared to prevent or reduce those impacts.

Regional leaders are aware of these challenges and have begun to make commitments and agreements that will enhance their understanding of future climate change, their own adaptive capacity, and where critical changes and investments need to be made. Leaders have not addressed the problem from a preventive perspective through policy changes or infrastructure investments because of a lack of systematic analysis that quantifies and qualifies the potential impact to the region, allowing the development of relevant and economically viable options. At present the region is still responding to climate change in a reactive manner.
This paper does not represent US Government views.

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Mexico, The Caribbean, and Central America: The Impact of Climate Change to 2030

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The National Intelligence Council sponsors workshops and research with nongovernmental experts to gain knowledge and insights and to sharpen debate on critical issues. The views expressed in this report do not reflect official US Government positions.