Community Profile: Southeast Los Angeles (SELA)
Southeast Los Angeles (SELA) is a region long shaped by industrial land uses and dense transportation infrastructure. Freeways, railyards, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities are embedded directly within residential neighborhoods, contributing to some of the highest cumulative pollution burdens in California. For years, residents have raised concerns about local air quality and its impacts on health.
SELA is also a predominantly Latino region. As shown in Figure 1, nearly 95% of SELA residents identify as Latino, compared to just over one-third statewide. This demographic context is critical – communities of color in California have historically borne a disproportionate share of environmental and public health burdens, often alongside underinvestment in environmental monitoring and mitigation.
Figure 1. Racial and ethnic composition of California compared to Southeast Los Angeles (SELA), highlighting the predominantly Latino population in SELA.
Our team at UC Irvine is working in collaboration with Alliance for a Better Community (ABC) to deploy TARTA, a portable air quality monitoring instrument designed to detect toxic metals, in SELA neighborhoods. ABC is a nonprofit organization committed to advancing social, economic, racial equity and justice for the Latina/o community and the Los Angeles region through power building and policy advocacy. Their leadership and long-standing relationships in SELA are central to ensuring that our project’s air monitoring efforts reflect community priorities and concerns.
In recognition of the region’s high cumulative pollution exposure, SELA has been designated as an AB 617 Community by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). SELA communities, on average, have a CalEnviroScreen score of 91.4, indicating that residents face greater cumulative pollution burden and socioeconomic vulnerability than 91.4% of communities statewide. As a result, the SELA region ranks among the top 10% most environmentally vulnerable communities in California, with high percentiles statewide for overall pollution burden and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure as well. Figure 2 shows CalEnviroScreen scores across SELA, highlighting the extent to which many neighborhoods experience overlapping environmental stressors.
Figure 2. CalEnviroScreen 4.0 indicators for Southeast Los Angeles (SELA), illustrating the region’s disproportionate environmental exposure.
Through AB 617 initiatives, the regional air quality management district (SCAQMD) has developed plans to identify pollution hotspots and reduce exposure from sources such as truck traffic, industrial facilities, and metal processing operations in SELA. While these efforts provide some much needed regional data, many residents continue to be concerned with what is present in the air surrounding their homes throughout the day.
Deploying TARTA in SELA helps address this gap by generating real-time data on toxic metals, which are pollutants that are often not captured by conventional air quality monitoring networks. The instrument’s portability allows it to be placed directly outside residential spaces, enabling monitoring that is both technically robust and community driven. By working alongside ABC and SELA community members, our goal is to bring advanced air monitoring tools directly into neighborhoods that have long experienced disproportionate environmental harms. The UC Irvine team is continuing to collect data throughout 2026, and we are looking forward to sharing results in the coming months!