Community groups say Louisiana is trying to stop them from monitoring air pollution

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NPR

May 22, 2025 12:55 PM ET


Community groups in Louisiana have filed a federal lawsuit alleging a state law that regulates air-pollution monitoring violates their constitutional rights. Private organizations have been using low-cost air sensors to detect toxic pollution from the state's refineries and chemical plants.

The testing, some of which has been funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, serves as a critical line of defense, environmental and public health advocates say, especially for residents of an industrial corridor in Louisiana known as Cancer Alley. Air testing by community groups can fill gaps in monitoring programs conducted by industry and state regulators, advocates say, and provide real-time alerts when accidents happen.

Last year, Louisiana lawmakers put new requirements on those community testing activities. The law says that for community groups to allege violations of environmental rules, they have to use federally-approved monitoring equipment, and it sets restrictions for analyzing and sharing the data. Several community groups said in a complaint in Louisiana federal court on Thursday that the law's "onerous restrictions" violate their rights to free speech and to petition the government.

"This is just an obvious attempt to keep citizen groups from doing any monitoring," says David Bookbinder, a lawyer for the plaintiffs and the director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, which helps frontline communities push for tough environmental standards. "The impact has been muzzling — groups either stopping doing monitoring, not starting to do monitoring that they wanted to do or no longer publishing results," Bookbinder says.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/22/nx-s1-5406261/louisiana-air-pollution-free-speech-rights

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Link to COMPLAINT (PDF) - https://environmentalintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Lawsuit-over-LA-air-monitoring-5.22.25.pdf

I expect they are talking about some of the consumer sensors - most common, those made by PurpleAir, which also has a map of locations of personal sensors so people can see what conditions are like. Alternately, I have an Ambient PM2.5 outdoor sensor that reports to Ambient's map. I have a similar unit inside that does 2.5 & 10 ug/m³ and CO (ppm).

[eleonora]

1. Louisiana has big plans, none of which involve health consequences for their constituents.

Incoming are Meta's enormous new AI data center in the north, and a new large steel mill planned for the corridor. Landry's quietly changing laws so Louisianans will have to shut up and take it. Huge environmental pollution fallout and energy issues are in the cards for the state.

[Dear_Prudence]

2. Bucket brigade

This movement for citizen air monitoring began many years ago. Neighbors of noxious facilities were taught how to build buckets that could take air samples. The collected samples would then be analyzed at a laboratory. The monitoring was a way to involve the community, to demystify the air monitoring process, and to pressure air regulatory agencies. But, as I recall, the lab analysis cost money and, typically, regulators would continue their see-no-evil stance.
https://labucketbrigade.org/pollution-tools-resources/the-bucket/