Surita Hernandez
Moapa, Nevada

When it's windy, you can feel it and taste it--the dust. I guess it's the ash. It's like a dark cloud. When it comes, we usually don't go out, but it'll still come in through the cracks and vents.

Four of my five kids have asthma. My oldest daughter, Aaliyah, they first told me she had asthma when she was a few months old. My second daughter, Zayda, she kept getting sick. My mom took her to the doctor one day when she was six or seven, and they had to call the LifeFlight helicopter because her breathing was so low. They called me at work, and I just started crying right there.

My son, Gyiel, when he was a couple of months old, I had to take him back to the hospital because of asthma. And then my youngest, Ayashi, she was two weeks old when we had to take her back for some kind of respiratory issue. That's when they gave us a nebulizer to use at home.

It just seems like everybody around here has some kind of health problem. My own family's health problems--I can't say for sure it's because of the plant. But I do know that the plant has all those chemicals and the bad stuff flowing from there, and it's right behind our yard. That's the thing to me: that we don't know. (Interviewed on July 22, 2012)