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Franco still remembers the moment he realized his nose worked. Growing up in the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles, a city dotted with oil refineries and next to one of the country’s largest ports, Franco assumed he had a fever or allergies. “I just couldn’t breathe through my nose,” he told me. But when he left town for college, he suddenly found it easier to breathe. “I was so surprised. I could smell lemons.”
Franco can still picture in her mind a map of the Wilmington refinery and the chemicals it spewed into the air. After returning to California at age 28, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. In her 30s, her high school classmates began dying one after another. Then Franco developed another cancer: acinic cell carcinoma, a rare cancer of the salivary glands. Doctors cut open the skin on the right side of her face and removed a golf-ball-sized tumor. Two years later, the tumor returned, and Franco underwent intense radiation treatments that felt like “a punch in the jaw.” She was in her mid-50s.
After spending his childhood in Los Angeles County and a few years of his adulthood in Long Beach, in 2020 he set out to document the experiences of generations of longtime residents like Franco in this industrial port city. Between errands, he dodged 18-wheeler trucks, watched the fine dust drift in the air, and biked along the trash-choked Los Angeles River. He saw smokestacks storming into the sky. Even indoors, a smell like rotten eggs sometimes wafted from the oil wells where tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil are produced every day for shipment around the world.
These photos tell the story of this place through which the country’s oil and many of its goods pass on their way to their final destination. 300,000 people The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 busiest ports, and their neighborhoods are defined by the machinery of big business. Interstate 710 carries thousands of diesel trucks through low-income neighborhoods. 2023 These trucks alone transported 8.6 million containers. Wilmington Oil Field Third Largest The largest in the continental United States, Los Angeles County’s seven refineries have a combined capacity of 1 million barrels per day. 60% of California’s total oil refining capacityrecently, Warehousing and logistics boom Across Southern California, residential streets have been transformed into commercial thoroughfares.
At the start of the pandemic, Jose Ulloa, a Wilmington resident of 27 years, watched his street turn into a truck alley. Ulloa said parts of his neighborhood were quickly covered in a thick layer of dirt, and dust and smoke wafted through the air as trucks roared through the streets. Some residents reported respiratory health issues; Ulloa was diagnosed with acute bronchitis, which eventually developed into severe asthma that he still suffers from.
“The cough sometimes keeps me and my family from sleeping,” Ulloa said, panting. “Before, the cough was so bad that it would give me stomach pains. [and] His back feels better, like he’s been exercising.” Our interview is cut short when he has a mild asthma attack. I watch as he fumbles into the bedroom and grabs an inhaler to dull the pain. “This has completely changed his life,” his wife, Imelda, says from the living room, shaking her head.
Polluted air is an invisible force: Nitrogen dioxide and chemically coated particulate matter (a by-product of industrial activity) have been repeatedly linked to cancer, reduced lung function and chronic respiratory disease. Children who develop asthma as a result of exposure to toxic air can suffer from breathing problems for the rest of their lives, says Joel Arvais, deputy director of the Center for Environmental Health. Community Asthma Management and Prevention“Paul English, a recently retired research scientist and director of the Public Health Institute, told me that studies have shown that particulate matter is particularly concentrated in low-income neighborhoods.
Over the past few years, California I tried my best To regulate dirty air. But Los Angeles most Ozone and particulate pollution is the worst of any city in the United States. New DataForty-one of California’s 45 reporting counties received an F rating for particulate pollution, including most counties in Southern California.
I recently reached out to Franco. Another childhood friend was diagnosed with breast cancer this year, finished radiation treatment and is starting chemotherapy this month. “It’s just something when you hear about someone dying from cancer,” Franco told me. “But when that person is serious, it’s a whole other level.”
This story begins: Magnum FoundationIn partnership with Commonwealth Fund.
