Fighting to Breathe in Los Angeles County

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.

Joe Franco, 57, is a cancer survivor who grew up next to an oil refinery in Wilmington, California. (Pablo Unzueta)

Shipping containers can be seen in the distance from Wilmington Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in Los Angeles. (Pablo Unzueta)

A truck passes a storage company a block off Pacific Coast Highway after the region, which includes parts of the Inland Empire and Orange County, saw unprecedented freight volumes at the end of 2021, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.(Pablo Unzueta)

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.

Hilary Landreau, 80, stands in front of his home in Wilmington as an 18-wheeler truck passes by. Now retired, Landreau has worked in steel mills and auto repair shops his whole life and has lived in this house for about 40 years. His neighborhood is in the 90744 zip code. According to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the area ranks in the top 2% of South Coast air areas for “cancer risk from air toxics” caused by diesel particulate matter, benzene, arsenic and other chemicals. Landreau lost his wife to cancer in 2004. “We didn’t know what it was, what caused it,” Landreau told me. “You get used to it all because you’ve lived here for so many years.” (Pablo Unzueta)

A portrait of Landreau’s late wife hangs in the home they shared, a short walk from the Marathon refinery. (Pablo Unzueta)

Jose Ulloa (59), a 27-year-old resident of Wilmington, developed acute bronchitis in 2020 and has suffered from severe asthma for more than two years. He uses an asthma inhaler to relieve his symptoms, as he has difficulty even continuing a conversation without coughing. (Pablo Unzueta)

A cross hangs above Ulloa’s bed in his Wilmington home. (Pablo Unzueta)

*left:* A commonly used inhaler for uloroa. *center:* Carlos Ovalle, 66, was diagnosed with asthma in 2010 and uses this inhaler every day. *right:* Franco, who has suffered from breathing problems for years, uses this inhaler every day. (Pablo Unzueta)

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.

The smokestacks of the Phillips 66 refinery are visible from the residential area of Figueroa Place in Wilmington. (Pablo Unzueta)

Trash is strewn along the Dominguez River, a 15-mile stretch of water in southern Los Angeles County that serves as a discharge point for industrial wastewater that eventually flows into the Pacific Ocean. (Pablo Unzueta)

Gustavo Hernandez poses for a portrait in front of the house he has lived in since 1977, adjacent to the Phillips 66 refinery. Wilmington’s 50,000 residents, most of whom are people of color, experience more pollution than more than 90% of California residents, according to a 2021 study. report By Grist. (Pablo Unzueta)

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.

A view from a Wilmington front yard as an 18-wheeler truck passes by (Pablo Unzueta)

Juan Sandoval, 53, who lives near Drum Street, once a residential area but now a major truck road, changes the oil in his neighbor’s car. “I keep my windows down, so sometimes I can hear the trucks and see them shaking,” he told me. The Marathon refinery is just a short walk away. (Pablo Unzueta)

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.”