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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'They're killing us,' Texas residents say of Trump rollbacks
HOUSTON (AP) Danielle Nelsons best monitor for the emissions billowing out of the oil refineries and chemical plants surrounding her home: The heaving chest of her 9-year-old asthmatic son.
On some nights, the boy's chest shudders as he fights for breath in his sleep. Nelson suspects the towering plants and refineries are to blame, rising like a lit-up city at night around her squat brick apartment building in the rugged Texas Gulf Coast city of Port Arthur.
Ask Nelson what protection the federal government and plant operators provide her African American community, and her answer is blunt. Theyre basically killing us," says the 37-year-old, who herself has been diagnosed with respiratory problems since moving to the community after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
We dont even know what were breathing, she says.
The Texas Gulf Coast is the United States petrochemical corridor, with four of the countrys 10 biggest oil and gas refineries and thousands of chemical facilities.
Residents of the mostly black and Latino communities closest to the refineries and chemical plants say that puts them on the front line of the Trump administrations rollbacks of decades of public health and environmental protections.
https://news.yahoo.com/theyre-killing-us-texas-residents-161239637.html
cayugafalls
(5,652 posts)Just doing a drive by, you can smell the plants. It is all you can do to not gag.
Shame they have to live there and not have any protections. Now Dump has just made it worse...
Grins
(7,257 posts)And their zoning laws that allow homes, schools, hospitals, small retail adjacent to refineries and fertilizer plants that explode kinda regularly...?
Their role is much bigger than the feds.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Nay
(12,051 posts)Blue Owl
(50,546 posts)And not in the good way...