Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from massive chemical storage tanks in St Rose, Louisiana.
Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, causing headaches, nausea, and insomnia. One night, she grabbed her son at 3am and fled to an all-night Ihop.
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In 2023, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group.
But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how such data could be used. She stopped.
“I shut my mouth like they wanted me to,” said Kyereh.
Along the 85-mile corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, cancer rates from toxic air pollution are among the nation’s highest.
Many residents live in the shadows of heavy industry with no idea what they’re breathing.
Gaps in Monitoring
A Floodlight/Guardian analysis found that Louisiana’s public air monitors are often miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals.
The analysis identified the state’s top 25 industrial air polluters using self-reported emissions data to the EPA, then calculated each plant’s distance to the nearest public monitor and determined which pollutants are tested.
Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities operate without a single public air monitor within five miles.
Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine is about eight miles from the nearest station, which measures only ozone, even though the plant releases toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen.
