New Report Examines How Louisville Community Tracks Industrial Air Pollution and Protects Residents

Today, the American Lung Association released a new report, “Something in the Air: How Communities Are Tracking the Air They Breathe.” The report examines how communities impacted by major sources of air pollution are using air quality monitors to reveal local-level pollution gaps, use data to inform and guide local decision-making, and strengthen cross-sector partnerships for cleaner air. It features an initiative to protect Louisville residents from the health impacts of hazardous air pollutants emitted by facilities in the Rubbertown industrial corridor.

The Louisville case study delves into the work of Air Justice, a community-led, academic-grassroots project. In Rubbertown, dozens of large-scale Title V facilities, including those involved in chemical manufacturing, petrochemical storage, and hazardous waste treatment and disposal, operate directly adjacent to residential neighborhoods. Air Justice conducted extensive in-person surveys of fenceline communities, which showed substantial health impacts. Half of respondents reported asthma or other lung conditions, and 16% reported cancer. The surveys directly informed the project’s design by identifying where monitoring was most needed, which pollutants residents were most concerned about, and how information should be shared back with the community. Read the full case study here.

“Air pollution from refineries, power plants and other heavy industrial facilities poses a persistent threat to public health. Fenceline communities are exposed to concentrated mixtures of criteria pollutants and hazardous air pollutants that are strongly linked to respiratory disease, cardiovascular harm, cancer risk and other serious health outcomes,” said Will Barrett, assistant vice president, nationwide policy, clean air, for the Lung Association. “Fenceline exposure can be far more severe than what appears in official monitoring datasets, so it is critical to capture real conditions. This initiative in Louisville is a powerful example of how community-led monitoring can fill the gap and lead to meaningful action.”

The full report, “Something in the Air: How Communities Are Tracking the Air They Breathe,” examines how community air quality monitoring reveals pollution patterns that traditional networks are not designed to capture. While U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) monitoring network remains the foundation for meeting and enforcing air pollution standards, it does not capture pollution trends at the hyperlocal level, by neighborhood or by block. This is especially important for communities near busy highways and major industrial sites, and in wildfire-prone regions. As a result, many communities, like Louisville, are strengthening their ability to measure and respond to air pollution through collaborative partnerships that integrate low-cost sensors, mobile monitoring and other research instruments that translate data into tangible protections. 

The report offers specific recommended actions for EPA; federal partners; state and local governments; research, academic and technical partners; and community groups and individuals to take to broaden the use of community air monitoring to improve public health. Learn more at Lung.org/something-in-the-air.

“Something in the Air: How Communities Are Tracking the Air They Breathe” is the third report in a series supplementing the Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report, which examines unhealthy levels of pollution in cities and counties across the country. The series aims to expand the role of emerging technologies in air quality monitoring and public health protection. Additional case studies in this report focus on pollution from heavy-duty traffic and wildfire smoke, as well as another case study on industrial air pollution in Commerce City, Colorado. The first report in the series, “Something in the Air: Bridging the Air Quality Data Gap with Satellite Technology,” was released in October 2024, and the second report, “Something in the Air: Nitrogen Dioxide and Community Health,” was released in March 2025.