There’s a small white device that sits in Connie Ho’s kitchen. It’s part of her morning routine – an essential tool for her to figure out how she’s going to plan her day.
It’s not an Amazon device that starts with the letter “A.” It’s a PurpleAir sensor, measuring all types of data about air quality in her immediate area, given to her for free by the Asian Pacific Islander (API) Forward Movement. Connie says she checks it almost everyday first thing in the morning.
“I’m looking at the raw PM 2.5 data to determine if it’s ok for me to be outside for long periods of time,” she said. “I’m also looking at the humidity levels because I personally really suffer when it’s dry. So I use that as a really solid piece of evidence of whether I should go outside or not.”
At 27 years old, Ho works as an executive assistant at an arts nonprofit. She lives with her parents, two Vietnamese immigrants who settled in southern California as young adults. For most of her life, home has been in Alhambra, which is tucked into the northeast corner of Los Angeles County. At the base of the Angeles National Forest, Alhambra suffers from poor air quality often – largely a result of the close proximity to the heavily-commuted 10 and 710 freeways. Car exhaust is one of the big emitters of particulate matter, including PM 2.5 and PM 10.
“Cars in front of our house have dramatically increased and traffic in front of our house has dramatically increased in the past 20 years,” Ho said.
The increase in wildfires in Southern California in the past five years has been a new wave of concern for her. She said that’s what propelled her to start thinking more seriously about air quality and to seek out her own personal sensor – until she came across APIFM’s program where they were giving them out to residents.
According to a report from API Forward, 31% of Alhambra’s population is made up of the age groups most susceptible to the negative effects of air pollution. Out of the over 85,100 residents, 17% of residents are 65 years old or older, and 14% are 15 years old or younger. That’s who APIFM wants to support, said Jean Park, the community engagement coordinator of APIFM.
“We are able to step in in terms of providing language access, in terms of providing culturally-relevant programming and services, whether that’s through community health, food access, or through our environmental justice programs,” Park said. “Little things like translation and interpretation are definitely important when it comes to engaging and educating. We try to make sure to prioritize that as much as we can with the funding that we have available and the capacity that we have.”
When Connie first applied for her sensor, she attended a two-hour virtual orientation hosted by APIFM. They walked her and four other Alhambra residents through the process of how to use the sensor. A researcher gave a more in-depth presentation about what the different terms were and the basics of air quality education, which Ho said was really interesting to her.
“I learned that our sensor could collect different types of air quality measurements, temperature, humidity, and the raw PM 2.5 data is what we were told to look at.”
API Forward acquired the PurpleAir sensors, like the one Connie has, through grants from organizations or government agencies doing studies on air quality in lower-income areas. These sensors will show up on the general PurpleAir map when the general public checks out Los Angeles. The sensor distribution program is one of several in the Los Angeles area targeting lower-income and higher-risk communities, who are the most impacted by poor air quality. Park explained that even though grants have made these sensors more accessible, there are still plenty of hurdles to making air quality understandable for residents.
“There are still residents who maybe don’t have internet access at home and the sensors do require Wi-Fi,” Park said. “They require a power source. Certain homes just don’t have specific amenities. That’s why we’ve been looking into other sensors that would narrow that gap a little more.”
Los Angeles’ air has gotten better, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy. For decades, community groups like APIFM have been advocating for residents like Connie whose voices are left out of the environmental policy discourse. They’ve also been educating residents through workshops and giving them the tools to better understand the risks in their neighborhoods. By increasing accessibility to environmental health information, activists are also redefining who the experts really are – and what communities really need.
LIVING, BREATHING HISTORY
If you happened to pick up a copy of the Los Angeles Times on September 14, 1979, you’d see the headline: “Smog siege grips area for 7th day.” An eerie photo of a thick cloud hangs over the city. “Eye-searing, throat-burning smog smothered the Los Angeles area in a bourbon-colored blanket,” the first line reads. This “siege” had a tight hold on the city – children were kept inside for recess, and many people with asthma and other respiratory issues were rushed to the hospital.
Forty-two years later, Los Angeles still has some of the worst air pollution in the nation. Earlier this year, the American Lung Association’s State of the Air report gave the county an “F” for ozone and particle pollution.
Between then and now, the story of LA’s air has become more complex. In 1993, the University of Southern California launched the Children’s Health Study. It was the largest and most elaborate study of air pollution’s effects on the respiratory health of more than 12,000 Southern Californian youth. Data was collected on children’s lung function and capacity, as well as bronchiatic symptoms. Some of the kids were tracked from kindergarten until their final year of high school.
The results of the study were jarring. It found that children who had chronic exposure to air pollution had significantly lower lung growth and function by the time they turned 18 years old, when lung function deficits are unlikely to be reversed. The most harmful pollutants included ozone, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. Children who were active outside and participated in sports in high ozone communities also had a higher risk of developing asthma.
Things changed in Los Angeles the next few decades following that 1979 issue of the Times. The federal Clean Air Act of 1988 was instated, igniting conversations and stronger advocacy around air quality across the country. Regulators began enforcing pollution policies and programs to reduce on-road emissions were successful, including adding newer and cleaner engines and the electrification of vehicles. Cars are 99% cleaner than they were in 1990. Today, California has some of the strictest air quality regulations in the country.
“I think many people don’t appreciate that in some ways Los Angeles is a success story in terms of improving air quality over the years,” said Ed Avol, “But that’s not to say we’ve achieved success or that we’re living in a place that has clean air, because that is not the case.”
But despite that progress, there is and has been a clear divide between who gets to breathe clean air more often and who doesn’t. Air quality is more likely to be worse in lower-income areas of Los Angeles, because housing located near freeways, railroads, and other pollution hubs is much cheaper. Ground-level ozone and PM2.5 are those main pollutants of great concern, says the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), because they can cause respiratory and cardiovascular effects. The result is higher rates of asthma and pollution-induced health conditions in lower-income areas.
Chronic exposure to air pollution can cause and worsen many health conditions, even resulting in premature death. Los Angeles is incredibly diverse, but the discrimination is still there, Avol said. Lower-income communities tend to have a population that is more people of color, who end up suffering the consequences at a higher rate.
“We have a real, what used to be called, mixing pot, although we’re not all that well mixed in some certain communities,” Avol said. “Those pollution levels of disproportionate exposure tend to be pervasive in those areas because, among other things, the money to redo the infrastructure and improve the situation in those communities is lacking. The political clout may also be lacking.”
When it comes to protecting themselves from air pollution, these residents also have a disadvantage. Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician in Orange County, told the California Health Report in 2018 that lower-income people may need to spend more time outside walking or waiting for transportation if they don’t have access to a car. Air-conditioning is expensive, he added, so windows may need to be kept open, allowing polluted air to infiltrate living spaces much easier.
“Over that long time, the air quality trends in Southern California changed for the better,” said Wendy Gutschowe, community engagement administrator for the division of environmental health for USC Keck. “Some of that research really started to support policy change and a lot of that policy change was actually driven by communities.”
Armed with their knowledge of air quality inequities, activists have been fighting back against expansive freeway projects, warehouse-building and other sources of dangerous emissions for decades. Grants from the city and from AB 617 have opened more doors, allowing for programs like the PurpleAir sensor program to exist.
COMMUNITY IMPACT
Ignacio Gutierrez is a resident of the Jefferson neighborhoods in South LA and graduated from the Air Quality Academy. He received a PurpleAir sensor from the program, and since participating in 2019, has become active in advocating for safer spaces and getting rid of polluting industries in his neighborhood.
In a video on the SCLA-PUSH website, Gutierrez stands in front of a construction site across the street from where he lives.
“In this area, we had abundant warehouses for more than 20 years, contaminating our neighborhood. All of the community got together and the warehouses were demolished,” he said. “Now this side will be affordable housing and the other half will be a four-acre park.
This is what you may find if you drive a little south of Alhambra and into South Los Angeles. It’s a product of something called the Air Quality Academy, run by community organizers from the Physicians of Social Responsibility in Downtown LA.
Paula Torrado Plazas runs the operation. She was seven years old when she moved from Colombia to Houston, Texas. She has always known that she wants to save the environment because helping the environment means helping people who are most in danger of climate change. Currently, she is the air and toxics policy analyst for the Physicians of Social Responsibility. She also is the projects coordinator for SCLA-PUSH, which stands for South Central LA Project to Understand the Sources and Health Impacts of Local Air Pollution. This group was formed thanks to the A.B. 617 policy which was passed and signed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2017. This bill requires the California Air Resources Board and air districts to report and monitor air quality, as well as develop plans for emissions reduction. It’s had a strong impact on boosting community advocacy around air policy, given that the goal is to reduce unequal distribution of air pollution in cities across California.
Torrado Plazas says the reason that pollution plagues South LA with the intensity that it does comes down to one explanation.
“It’s environmental racism, that’s what it is,” she said. “The redlining, all these racial practices of land use in the early sixties have had terrible consequences in how communities are experiencing disproportionate impacts to air quality and we see that today. The deep connections to environmental racism are the result of environmental injustice in South Los Angeles. We see that in the maps that we develop or air quality. We see how pollution levels– ozone, diesel, particulate matter, are really elevated.”
All of this, combined with other socioeconomic stressors such as unemployment, make it more difficult for residents from lower-income areas to cope with the disproportionate impacts of air quality, Torrado Plazas said.
In 2019, SCLA-PUSH launched the Air Quality Academy. It was a two-day training hosted three times a year in different vulnerable areas of Los Angeles and was created to help educate residents on the state of air quality and make information free and more accessible. So far, the organization has trained more than 70 residents, certifying them as “South Central LA Air Quality Ambassadors.” These Ambassadors are more equipped to spot potential hazardous uses and collect more data on additional environmental stressors such as cracked sidewalks, lack of green spaces, and litter, as it states on SCLA-PUSH’s website.
Live PurpleAir sensors from left to right: Pacific Palisades and Beverly Hills
These workshops have changed residents’ confidence, Torrado Plazas said. By giving community members tools and education on how air quality directly impacts them and their loved ones, there’s a shift in how they start making decisions. It’s an opportunity to take back control of their health, of their communities that house the people they love most.
BEYOND NUMBERS
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit shortly after the Academy’s launch, Torrado Plazas said that SCLA-PUSH thought about how to pivot fast. There was a sense of urgency, especially as the pandemic has disproportionately harmed Latino and Black people, who largely make up the population of South Los Angeles.
“We were seeing community members struggling to be engaged in the process but not having the technology capacity,” she said. “There were a lot of technology gaps.”
But in a way, this pandemic has highlighted the support network that these community groups have woven. As a result of providing tools and educational access, Torrado Plazas says that strengthening relationships with the residents helps build trust in the work they are doing – something that many residents feel is missing from the policymakers at the city government level.
“A lot of the popular education tools we had built before for the Air Quality Ambassadors program have transitioned into virtual engagement and we’re now very conscious about phone banking and wellness check-ins,” she said.
This wellness groundwork, something that these community groups focus heavily on, is something that many advocates say is missing from government policies meant to lighten the load of pollution and improve air quality. Individual impacts go beyond asthma and breathing in bad air – it is about getting to know the residents who make their living on a personal level in these neighborhoods, Park said. And sometimes the grant money just doesn’t account for that extra work.
Live PurpleAir sensors from left to right: Expo Park in South LA and Alhambra
“In Monterey Park and Alhambra, it is one of the most linguistically isolated cities in the county, so if we are not able to provide interpreters at these educational workshops, we aren’t able to do outreach to folks who are non-English proficient,” Park said. “That’s something that we were struggling to figure out, is how can we provide that access? If we do apply for grants in the future, how can we try and work with the funder to make sure that we prioritize this kind of engagement and funding for this kind of outreach?”
THE NEXT BREATH
It would be wishful thinking to assume everyone cares about the air they are breathing, at least enough to attend workshops or get a sensor. In fact, Connie Ho has found that her parents don’t quite have the same interest in checking the PurpleAir sensor as much as she does.
“I tell them about the air quality, what it’s like outside, and I think it’s one of those things that they don’t think too much about or feel affected by,” Ho said. “Or maybe they do feel affected by it, but they don’t let it determine what they’re going to do that day.”
Jean Park said that apathy is something they’ve run into quite a bit while doing outreach in different neighborhoods, especially more vulnerable communities and those from lower-income backgrounds.
“Air quality is something you can’t necessarily see. At the end of the day, if you can’t pay for your bus ticket, if you can’t put food on the table, those are needs that have to be met first,” Park said. “That’s something that we’ve been trying to incorporate into our work and into our engagement in having that understanding, and wanting to be more intersectional in our work.”
Both SCLA-PUSH and APIFM have made it clear that their work is just beginning in the long fight against air quality inequalities. People like Ho are valuable to that work.
“It’s cool to be like a citizen scientist and to be a little more aware of what’s around me,” Ho said.
For now, the little white sensor blinks on Connie Ho’s porch, for the world to see.