Kimbrelle Kyereh lives a few hundred feet from massive chemical storage tanks in St Rose, Louisiana. The oily fumes that seep into her home bring headaches, nausea, and sleepless nights. One morning at 3am, she grabbed her son and fled to an all-night restaurant to escape the smell.
In 2023, after years of breathing contaminated air, Kyereh started collecting air samples in her yard with a local environmental group. Within months, the state passed a law that gutted the usefulness of her data. "I shut my mouth like they wanted me to," she said.
Along the 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where cancer rates from toxic air rank among the nation's worst, residents live in industrial shadow zones with no real picture of what they're breathing.
An investigation found that Louisiana's public air monitors sit miles away from major polluters and test for only a fraction of dangerous chemicals. The state's 25 worst industrial air polluters were examined using EPA emissions data paired with state monitoring records. The results are stark: ten of the state's heaviest air-polluting facilities have no public monitor within five miles.
Dow Chemical's plastics factory in Plaquemine sits eight miles from the nearest monitoring station. That station measures only ozone, ignoring the plant's emissions of ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen. CF Industries' Donaldsonville facility releases more than 7 million pounds of ammonia each year, yet no public monitors track it. Three chemicals that researchers identified as driving most cancer risk in the region,ethylene oxide, chloroprene, and formaldehyde,go unmeasured by the state entirely.
The consequences became clear on August 24, 2023, when a naphtha leak at Marathon's Garyville refinery exposed the system's dangerous gaps. The coast guard reported the leak at 6:50pm from an above-ground tank. More than six hours passed before state environmental officials began monitoring the air. At dawn, the naphtha ignited in a massive fire that sent black smoke billowing across the region.
Two nearby schools opened anyway. Residents within two miles didn't receive evacuation orders until 10:15am, more than 15 hours after the leak started. At least 29 residents were treated at hospitals for exposure to naphtha's toxic effects. The nearest state monitor measured only ozone, missing the volatile organic compounds released in the fire. The refinery's own fenceline monitor tracked just benzene. By contrast, Marathon's Los Angeles refinery continuously monitors more than 15 pollutants under California's stricter rules.
Environmental chemist Wilma Subra, a decorated researcher from Louisiana, examined the fire's emissions. Better air monitoring, she concluded, would likely have prompted faster school closures and evacuations. "It's not adequate to protect the health of the community living in close proximity to these industrial facilities," she said of the state's network.
Industry's Long Fight Against Oversight
For years, former Louisiana state senator Cleo Fields, a Baton Rouge Democrat, proposed a straightforward solution: require major industrial polluters to monitor toxic emissions at their property lines and report the data to nearby communities. Each year, industry blocked it.
"I got so frustrated because every year this was opposed by industry for no good reason," Fields, now a U.S. representative, said. "State regulators were working totally in concert with industry, and the citizens just had no voice." He repeatedly heard the same complaint from petrochemical companies: his proposals cost too much. "Well, what is it costing people?" he asked. "It's costing them their lives."
In 2024, the Louisiana Chemistry Association, representing 70 chemical companies operating more than 100 sites statewide, helped draft the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act. The law banned the use of community air monitoring data for enforcement unless captured by EPA-approved equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars,far beyond reach for grassroots groups.
Community monitors on modest budgets had proven valuable. They reveal pollution hotspots that distant government stations miss, prompting official investigations and giving residents leverage for stronger oversight. The new law essentially stripped that tool away. A top EPA regional official called the bill "inconsistent with federal law."
State regulators operate 35 permanent air monitoring stations and claim the network "meets and exceeds all regulatory requirements." Yet Jason Meyers, who oversees the agency's air monitoring team, acknowledged the network was never designed to monitor pollution in fence-line communities where residents face the greatest exposure. The department has two mobile vans for emergencies, but most toxic air equipment samples only once every six days on a publicly known schedule, giving operators advance notice of inspections.
Louisiana has lost four air monitors since 2020. Spending for the air monitoring division fell nearly 15 percent between 2020 and 2026, or more than one-third when adjusted for inflation. Across the country, the number of operating air monitors dropped by nearly half during the decade ending in 2021. The EPA monitors toxic pollutants at 26 stations nationally, but none sit in Louisiana or Texas,two states with the largest toxic emissions volumes.
A Johns Hopkins University research team drove a mobile laboratory through Louisiana's industrial corridor and measured cancer risks from toxic emissions firsthand. In 14 of 15 locations studied, cancer risks exceeded EPA calculations by up to 11 times. "If large emissions from these facilities are happening far away from the air monitors, they're often going to go unnoticed," said Peter DeCarlo, the atmospheric scientist who co-authored the study. "But that doesn't mean they're not gonna have an effect on the people who live there."
New Orleans' Irish Channel neighborhood sits near a 48-acre storage terminal handling hot asphalt and toxic chemicals. Residents filed hundreds of complaints about noxious fumes. A temporary state monitor there recorded elevated levels of harmful particulate matter before Louisiana regulators shut it down in 2022. When the EPA urged the state to create a permanent station, officials refused. Louisiana's 2022 air monitoring plan included a section on "environmental justice considerations." A year later, it was gone, along with the St Rose monitor. When the EPA pushed back, the state replied that such considerations were "beyond the scope" of the plan.
Author James Rodriguez: "Louisiana's air monitoring network is a public health failure disguised as regulatory compliance."
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