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Jocelyn Vazquez carts a green fold-up wagon across Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. Part of her job is to lug around a mess of extension cords, tubes of zip ties, a computer and several air monitors.
In front of a three-flat off Rockwell Street, Vazquez unloads her equipment and organizes a game plan to install all the pieces of a low-cost air sensor.
“This is all to build our community air monitoring network,” said Vazquez, a community science coordinator for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO).
The majority-Latino Southwest Side neighborhood is one of the most polluted in Chicago, according to the city’s Little Village Industrial Corridor Framework report. There’s nonstop truck traffic and a large industrial corridor.
Residents say public officials aren’t doing enough to protect them so they are taking matters into their own hands — monitoring air quality themselves with nearly $200 sensors. Five are currently in operation with a goal of installing 10 in the neighborhood. Data collected could be used to understand the severity of pollution and inform environmental policy.
Victor Rodriguez lives in the three-flat and untangles an extension cord that runs through the alley to connect to the air monitor.
“My lungs aren’t so good anymore,” Rodriguez said in Spanish. “And more than anything, I think we should be safe from contaminants. I want there to be less pollution and fewer sick people.”
LVEJO’s decision to develop a community monitoring network took shape after Chicago officials imploded the chimney of the old Crawford coal-power plant back in 2020. The city failed to adequately notify residents of the demolition and a massive dust cloud settled over parts of Little Village. Meanwhile, COVID-19 raged, adding more respiratory complications.
The Crawford implosion highlighted ongoing air pollution burdens in West and South side communities. That’s reflected in the city’s recently published environmental report and recently adopted Chicago Environmental Justice Index. The index produces scores for census tracts of the city using local environmental exposures and socioeconomic factors — the higher the score, the greater the environmental burden.
Little Village’s pollution burden ranked in the 90th percentile among Chicago’s neighborhoods.
“Some of those pollutants can actually not only impact the respiratory system, but can impact the other organs in the body as well,” said Serap Erdal, a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago who is helping LVEJO with the project.
She said that’s why the data collection could be so useful. These sensors will be able to collect real-time, localized air quality data, which Erdal said will be more representative of actual exposure conditions in the community.
Neither the city nor the state have deployed year-round air monitors in Little Village. According to Vazquez, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s nearest air monitoring station is in suburban Cicero. Meanwhile, the city is still working with community partners to launch its own community air monitoring network.
Vazquez said LVEJO plans to collect air quality data through the next year, and may even extend the study a second year. In the meantime, Rodriguez can track the local air quality from his phone.
“We have to try to make the environment better. One way to start is by cooperating,” Rodriguez said.
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco covers climate change and the environment for WBEZ and Grist. Follow him on X at @__juanpab.
