Toxic air lingers in a Texas Latino community, revealing failures in state’s air monitoring system

In the Houston-area community of Cloverleaf, locals say the air often smells like rotten eggs, nail polish or burning tires. Many residents said they suffer from respiratory problems, asthma and skin ailments, and they wonder if the air they’re breathing is the culprit.
Yet information about what they're breathing every day is hard to find, despite the presence of 23 state air monitoring sites near the 52-mile long Houston Ship Channel, one of the world’s largest petrochemical complexes where more than 200 facilities process fossil fuels into plastics, fertilizers and pesticides.
The emissions include particulate matter - microscopic particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause irregular heartbeats, aggravate asthma and other respiratory ailments - which some scientists call the deadliest form of air pollution. A recent air quality analysis by Air Alliance Houston using industry emissions data submitted to the state found a higher annual average concentration of particulate matter the closer people live to the Ship Channel.
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