I live in the western hemisphere's largest integrated industrial complex (Freeport, TX integrated with the eastern edge of Houston as well). Note that Freeport,

I live in the western hemisphere's largest integrated industrial complex (Freeport, TX integrated with the eastern edge of Houston as well). Note that Freeport, TX has ZERO state or federal EPA VOC analyzers which can actually detect which chemical is leaking. They can only detect "this amount of something with either sulfur or N-O bonds -- no clue what though!". Completely fucking useless for an area which manufactures something like 15-20% of all USA domestic chemicals. The entire east side of Houston metropolitan area has only 3 air quality monitors which test for these kinds of chemicals. During huge major events like the ITC fire, they often show no increased pollution at all. I lived next to leaks every day and because I worked in the plants I knew the smells - one day acrylates, next day thiols, next day hydrocarbons, etc. But the 3 monitoring sites over 10 miles from me showed nothing at all. Here is the one "correct" monitoring station near the chemical plants of Houston: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ab6f85198bda483a997a6956a8486539 https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... but several of its analyzers are often offline/broken/pending maintenance. Here's a map of all the other ones: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ab6f85198bda483a997a6956a8486539 https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... Generally single/dual color dots mark "not-useful" monitoring sites which might measure only PM2.5 or Ozone, for example. The 4+ color dots are generally useful. The data used by ProPublica is far worse than the data here -- because what ProPublica used was "self-reported" data from the chemical plants. But living next to them and working in them, I know that many leaks are never reported and many leaks are never even known internally! Our government's data collection is a travesty. ProPublica couldn't use the real air quality measurements because having 2-3 points across 1000 mi^2 is completely useless for the wind models they wanted to apply to the problem. We don't actually have any data. The government is failing us. They need to spend about $1 million per air monitoring station and build them along the perimeters of each plant so that leaks can be assigned to the offending companies, and they need to be built near housing so that we know how families are being affected. ITC fire which blanketed houston's sky in smoke: https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-quality-harris-county/10097289/ https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-qualit...