US Latinos mobilize to monitor and improve local air quality: We have to fix it'

"On a tree-lined street in a quiet suburb known by some as Arbor City, Eileen Miranda often watched her grandson race around the yard, trusting like most that the air they were breathing was clean. But data from an air quality sensor she recently installed outside her home showed otherwise. Now she wonders if it was the air that contributed to her eldest son's childhood struggle with asthma. It overwhelmed me, Miranda said. I thought the numbers would be low."

"At 66, the grandmother of eight, who lives in La Mirada, a suburb south-east of Los Angeles, began noticing in her everyday life the cars idling on congested streets and the dizzying pace of heavy-duty diesel trucks coming in and out of an industrial hub a mile from her home. These are the things that got me thinking this cannot be good for the air, she said."

"The grassroots monitoring comes as Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moves to scrap almost all pollution regulations by rescinding a key 16-year-old legal finding, alongside a barrage of other rollbacks of life-saving rules. Although more than half of the US population resides in areas with unhealthy air quality, communities of color are disproportionately affected, comprising 50% of those breathing in toxic air pollutants, despite representing just 41% of the US population, according to a recent analysis by the American Lung Association."

Many Latino residents have begun installing outdoor air quality sensors at homes, businesses, and churches to measure local pollution and push for community change. Local monitoring revealed high pollution levels near residences, with residents noting idling cars, heavy-duty diesel trucks, and nearby industrial hubs as likely contributors. One resident connected poor air readings to a family history of asthma. The surge in grassroots monitoring coincides with federal moves to rescind longstanding environmental protections. National analyses show communities of color face disproportionate exposure, comprising half of those breathing toxic air despite being 41% of the population.

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