By Dan Ross
October 6, 2022
eborah Bell-Holt lives near a decades-old drilling site in South L.A., where oil sucked to the surface comes laced with dangerous pollutants like benzene, formaldehyde, methane and toluene. What comes up must go somewhere, and Bell-Holt is sick at the prospect of how much toxic pollution ends up inside the bodies of her family and friends.
“There are moments where I’m so furious,” says Bell-Holt, 69, who has fostered six children. All of them, like her, suffer chronic asthma, a problem linked to the proximity of oil drilling. Some children have terrible skin problems. Her husband has been battling leukemia for several years. As if that wasn’t enough, Bell-Holt now worries about a new generation. “My oldest child is 26, and she has a child that’s 3 years old, and they’re both asthmatic, and they both live here.”