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This story is from Floodlight and is published in partnership with The Guardian and with contributions from The Louisiana Illuminator.

Kimbrelle Kyereh lives just a few hundred feet from the massive chemical storage tanks in St. Rose, in southeastern Louisiana. Oily fumes sometimes drift into her home, bringing headaches, nausea and insomnia. On one such night, she grabbed her son at 3 a.m. and fled to an all-night IHOP.

In 2023, after years of coping with the noxious odors, Kyereh began collecting air samples in her yard for a local environmental justice group. But soon after, Louisiana passed an industry-backed law that sharply restricted how that kind of data could be used.

“I shut my mouth like they wanted me to,” Kyereh said.

Along the 85-mile corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — where cancer rates from toxic air pollution are among the nation’s highest — many residents live in the shadows of heavy industry with no idea what they’re breathing.

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Turns out, that’s by design.

A Floodlight analysis found that Louisiana’s public air monitors are often located miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals.

The analysis identified the state’s top 25 industrial air polluters using emissions data that companies self-report to the EPA. Then we used state data to calculate each plant’s distance to the nearest public air monitoring station — and to determine which pollutants those monitors actually test for. We found:

Ten of Louisiana’s heaviest air-polluting facilities operate without a single public air monitor within five miles.

Dow Chemical’s plastics factory in Plaquemine is one of Louisiana’s biggest air polluters, releasing an array of toxic pollutants including ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen. The nearest air monitoring station is about eight miles away and measures only ozone.

No public monitors measure ammonia — despite CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant emitting more than 7 million pounds of it in 2024, making it one of the nation’s top toxic polluters, according to EPA data.

The three chemicals that researchers have concluded “together account for the large majority of total cancer risk” in the area — ethylene oxide, chloroprene and formaldehyde — aren’t monitored by the state at all.

Industry groups have spent years fighting proposals that would require better monitoring around manufacturing plants. They also helped draft a 2024 law that sharply restricted how community air monitoring could be used in enforcement.

Lawmakers later introduced similar legislation in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, suggesting Louisiana is one front in a broader fight over who gets to measure toxic air.

What the Monitors Missed

On Aug. 24, 2023, a leak at Marathon’s southeast Louisiana refinery exposed the limits of the state’s air monitoring system.

At 6:50 p.m., the Coast Guard fielded a report that naphtha — a highly flammable liquid — was leaking at the Garyville facility. More than six hours passed before the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality began monitoring the air.

Around 7 a.m., the leak ignited a massive fire, sending a plume of black smoke into the air. Two nearby schools opened anyway. Residents within two miles weren’t ordered to evacuate until 10:15 a.m. — more than 15 hours after the leak began.

Naphtha exposure can cause dizziness, headaches and nausea, and a Guardian investigation found at least 29 residents were later treated at area hospitals.

The nearest state air monitor measures ozone — but not the toxic pollutants, including volatile organic compounds, released in the fire — and the plant’s own monitors track just one chemical at its fenceline: benzene. The company’s Los Angeles refinery, by contrast, continuously monitors more than 15 pollutants — as California regulations require.

Wilma Subra, a decorated environmental chemist from Louisiana who examined the fire’s emissions, said better air monitoring likely would have prompted faster school closures and evacuations.

The state’s monitoring network, she said, is “not........

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