Essie Long walks for exercise inside they gymnasium at the J. Robinson, Sr., Community Center in the Pleasantville neighborhood of Houston, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. Long's parents moved into the neighborhood in the 1950s when she was a teenager. Long moved back to the neighborhood in 1985 and has lived there since. Since its founding, the historic Pleasantville neighborhood on Houston's east side, has seen heavy industry displace residential areas and slowly surround the neighborhood's borders. Achieving Community Tasks Successfully, or ACTS, a community-based organization in the historic Pleasantville neighborhood, is partnering with several organizations, including the Environmental Defense Fund and universities like Texas Southern University, to establish its own community-owned air monitoring network. The solar-powered monitors are calibrated to nearby federal regulatory monitors and designed to detect a range of airborne toxins, including fine particles, nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds, all of which are harmful to human health.
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