Asthma Cases Increase as Cities Continue to Ignore Federal Ozone Standards

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In late June, she joined other activists who traveled to Washington, D.C., for meetings with lawmakers and the EPA to discuss smog pollution and the harm it’s causing in their communities. They made the case for a strong standard, explaining that “the best public health studies we have all say that anything above 60 parts per billion will cause respiratory illness.”

This is an environmental justice battle, as she knows all too well. Cherelle has seen that fight since she was a child growing up in New Orleans in an area known as “cancer alley.” She watched friends and family members die from many different diseases, and that inspired her career in environmental science.

“I was too young to have this acute awareness of pollution in my environment and what it was costing the people I loved most,” said Cherelle. “I felt empowered to change that reality. There are lots of children struggling to grow up in environmental justice communities with that same awareness. I see them everyday all over North Texas and I am helping them in every way I know how.”

Cherelle is truly an inspiration—I’ll let her powerful words close out this column with a call to action:

“Everyone needs clean air. You can’t do anything if you can’t breathe. That concept is so basic it becomes lost on people. Children can’t learn and pay attention in class when they are struggling to breathe. They can’t play, they can’t go outside and explore. The world is no longer a magical place for a child who is fighting just to stay in it.  Every time we set a clean air standard that is not protective of health we are literally ripping their childhood away from them.   

“Meanwhile, Texas is number one in the country for air pollution but we are also number one in clean energy production! This tells me that bad air in Texas is a choice. We could absolutely be cleaner but it takes a strong smog standard to spur innovation, push businesses to adopt cleaner practices, and empower politicians and communities to demand better.

“There is a personal cost millions of families know all too well: every time I have to pull out the breathing machine because my son has little league practice, every time I have to go pick up his medications from the pharmacy, every time my husband and I sit down to do the budget and factor in the cost of his asthma medications, every time my son’s asthma gets out of control and we have to take him to the hospital and we know that huge bill is coming… I get angry because this is not our doing but it has become our problem and it shouldn’t be.

“People want energy but they don’t want it with a side of death and sickness. They don’t want it at any cost! I can’t run a business that poisons everyone around me and neither can energy companies and other polluting industries. They don’t get a pass. It is time for the full cost of doing business to rest squarely on the shoulders of the largest polluters. The people least equipped to pay—the public—have carried industries’ burden for decades and is being crushed under the weight of that cost. We should all demand that EPA shift that bill over to industry.”

Tell the EPA we need strong smog standards. Sign up for mobile air quality alerts and get a text message when the air is unsafe in your area. http://content.sierraclub.org/coal/mobile-air-alerts.