HOUSTON – The EPA awarded four Houston neighborhoods with much-needed grant money this week.
The Sunnyside, Pleasantville, Fifth Ward, and Galena Park neighborhoods will receive half a million dollars to expand air quality monitoring.
Currently, each neighborhood has five air monitors that retrieve real-time data day in and day out.
“Same Monitors that the city of Houston as well as Harris County utilizes and we have 5 of them here in the community they are all linked together, and link with the city and the county “- Reverend James Caldwell with COCO
The grant money from the EPA will help provide more monitors that will detect more than PM2.5 but air pollutants like ethylene oxide with a volatile organic compound.
In Thursday’s news conference, the City of Houston’s Health Department Dr. Lauren Hopkins highlighted the health concerns that these four neighborhoods face.
“Ethylene oxide is the biggest cancer driver here in this community. And we do not have one single measurement of ethylene oxide,” she said. “They will be the first to measure it. And it’s key because in terms of the whole United States, this community and the communities surrounding it, but specifically, Pleasantville is in the 99th percentile at the absolute worst cancer risk in the United States from air toxic exposure.”
If you would like to see the current air quality in your neighborhood, click here.