About 30 people have traveled from New Orleans to Texas to testify at an Environmental Protection Agency hearing on air quality.
They want increased air quality monitoring at oil and gas refineries.
Beverly Wright is director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University in New Orleans. She says monitoring is now sporadic.
“By the time they look at it, if it’s every month or six months, it’s too late. People have already been exposed," she says. "But if we did real-time monitoring that would really make more sense. EPA needs to hear the voices of the people, if not they’ll only hear industry. And if they only hear industry we’ll get far less than what we need to be protected.”
The EPA is proposing tougher standards to reduce air pollution by 25 percent.
