Toxic Tours by Communities for a Better Environment

Taking the Toxic Tour is definitely not a touristy thing to do, but it’s a certainly a tour that is quite eye-​opening. Led by the Communities for a Better Environment organization (
), the Toxic Tour is designed to show the effects of pollution on marginalized communities in the county.
The tour starts inside the CBE office where we get information showing the relation of people of color to Toxic Release Facilities in Los Angeles County and let me tell you, I was shocked to find out the % of homes, schools, places of business next to facilities they had no business being next to, specifically in Southeast Los Angeles in communities like Vernon, Commerce, Huntington Park, Maywood, etc.
While on the tour itself, we drove through a section of Vernon called «Asthma Town» which was given that moniker because of the high percentage of residents in that part of town who became asthmatic as a result of living there.
We stopped at a site of what was known as the“Mountain of Death” in the city of Huntington Park. This is the site of where a mountain of concrete collected from freeway damage during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
Residents got sick from breathing airborne debris coming from this site. It took the initial efforts of resident, Linda Marquez, to finally bring attention to what was happening and yet, it took 10 years to finally clean up the whole site.
Although there is already one power plant in Vernon, we were told about a proposal to build a second larger 943-​megawatt fossil fuel burning power plant, less than a mile from several schools and residential neighborhoods. The plant is projected to emit 881 tons of pollution each year (= 1.7 million pounds).
We also took a trip to Wrightwood where we learned that «flaring», both smoke and water vapor emissions that come out of the refineries in the South Bay are only suppose to happen under emergency conditions; yet, flaring happens on a daily basis. Unfortunately, flares while helpful can also produce dangerous air pollutants such as sulfur oxides, which some residents blame for incidences of asthma and even cancer.
There was even more information that was mentioned that could possibly be written in this review, so if you want to know more, you should check out the Toxic Tour for yourself. Just be sure to check the CBE website for upcoming dates.
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