Print
Roxana Barrera realized air pollution was a problem in her San Bernardino neighborhood when her son Leo got really sick just before his first birthday. He was wheezing so much she had to rush him to urgent care.
“It was scary,” the 27-year-old said. “The first time it happened, I didn’t know what was going on, I could just hear that he was really struggling to breathe.”
Leo, now three, was prescribed an inhaler, and Barrera was told that poor air quality was partly to blame. Air pollution in her neighborhood is among the worst in the nation, and its asthma rate is in the 97th percentile statewide.