Residents agree, and they have been organizing with the coalition to pressure HACLA. “They’re asking themselves, ‘Why are we always sick? Could it be from this factory site, could it be from this land?’” Thelmy Perez said.
Jordan Downs resident Emma Cortez believes her house has made her sick. For the past two years or so, she’s dealt with difficulties breathing, which feels like dust caught in her throat. “I can’t breathe and I can’t cough and it’s always there,” she said, speaking in Spanish through a translator. Her doctor told her that it’s an allergy that was probably caused by some kind of contamination. She says testing revealed lead at a level of 196 ppm in her front yard at Jordan Downs. She doesn’t know what other toxins may be lurking there.
She’s also not the only one with health issues. Her two daughters, who were very young when she moved to the housing complex, both experience frequent nosebleeds. She has a number of friends in the community whose children are autistic; one friend has two children with autism. Two of her friends at Jordan Downs have died of cancer.
Monika Shankar, land use and health coordinator at Physicians for Social Responsibility, has seen many health problems at Jordan Downs, including reproductive issues like low birth weights and mental health disorders. She’s also seen cancer and asthma plague residents, and she’s heard them talk about their children who can’t focus at school and deal with development disorders like ADHD. “The ones we’re concerned with are directly tied to contaminants found in the community,” she said, such as lead and arsenic.
And while no comprehensive blood testing data is yet available, she said that a health professional who works in the Watts neighborhood has noticed over the last year and a half that blood lead levels get higher the closer to Jordan Downs the patient lives.
Even with all of these troubling signs, a lot of data is missing. Residents and advocates have repeatedly argued that HACLA and the DTSC need to do comprehensive testing of both the existing residential areas and the factory site at Jordan Downs.