Lylla Younes was a reporter and developer on ProPublica’s news apps team. Her work mapping cancer-causing industrial pollution in Louisiana helped lead to the suspension of Formosa Plastic's permit in St. James Parish and won the 2020 Nina Mason Pulliam Award for Outstanding Environmental Reporting. In 2020, she was part of a team that wrote a peer-reviewed paper linking COVID-19 deaths to air pollution. She has also collaborated with the Oregonian and OPB on a series about how Oregon's timber industry hollows rural communities. The series won the 2021 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.
She was previously a data reporter with New York Public Radio (WNYC) and Gothamist.
In St. James Parish, Louisiana, a Taiwanese industrial giant seems likely to be granted a permit to build a billion-dollar plastics plant. Its proposed emissions could triple levels of cancer-causing chemicals in one of the most toxic areas of the U.S.
Air quality has improved for decades across the U.S., but Louisiana is backsliding. Our analysis found that a crush of new industrial plants will increase concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in predominantly black and poor communities.
ProPublica and The Times-Picayune and The Advocate investigated the potential cancer-causing toxicity in the air. Using EPA data, public records requests and more, we found that some of the country’s most toxic air will likely get worse.
Data from an EPA model indicates that communities along the lower Mississippi River corridor already face severely elevated cancer risks from industrial activity. Massive new chemical plants are slated to be built there anyway.
We found that Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare filed more lawsuits and won more wage garnishment orders than any other hospital system in Shelby County. Here’s how we did it.
Data from a civil rights group shows that reports of hate incidents involving American mosques jumped sharply in 2015 and has remained at the same rate since — about once every three days.
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