This story is part of our series Science Matters, where we interview scientists about the practical implications of federal attacks on science jobs, funding, and education for everyday families and public health.

It’s been a year since Kim Terrell walked away from her job of seven years as a staff scientist at Tulane’s Environmental Law Clinic, where she primarily studied the health impacts and economic tradeoffs of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry in the Gulf South. At the time, she had just published a new study, “Pervasive Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the U.S. Petrochemical Workforce,” that garnered unusual backlash.

The unexpected controversy had nothing to do with the findings. “I don’t think anybody is really that surprised to know that the petrochemical workforce is disproportionately white. What surprised me was how extreme and consistent it was,” she says. Louisiana had the most extreme disparity of any U.S. state. Texas and Illinois were also close. “Only about 19% of the good petrochemical jobs are held by people of color.”

The disagreement also had nothing to do with her research, which came from publicly available government data. “This is not a complicated analysis where there’s any room for subjectivity at all. You could re-create everything that I did in a couple of hours,” she says.

Tell Congress: Protect Families From the Plastics and Petrochemical Industry

Bad timing

It was the timing of the study’s publication that doomed her, she contends. The media picked up on a sanctioned press release about the study on the same day that the president of Tulane happened to be at the state capital asking for money for a development project, she says. “They call it Tulane Day at the Capitol. It’s an annual thing where they talk about the economic impact of the university, the good that it does, and lobby for funding.”

Dr. Terrell says the provost told her everything was going “wonderfully” until a buzz took over the crowd. “Somebody said, ‘Tulane is anti-chemical industry because of this just-published study.’ In the provost’s words, people were left feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed. You shouldn’t be embarrassed about research. It’s research!”

Within a week, Dr. Terrell says she was told she could no longer communicate with anybody without prior approval. She even had to ask if she could respond to someone thanking her for judging a local science fair. “I think I’m being a bit snarky saying, Can I please have permission to say you’re welcome?” Instead, she says she was asked, What’s the potential for this communication to be public?

Dr. Terrell says Tulane’s faculty handbook explicitly states that all academic personnel, including staff scientists, are protected by academic freedom. She says she was told, “Academic freedom is not one size fits all. I think anytime you say freedom is not one size fits all, you’re on the wrong side of history,” she says. Silenced to a point where she was unable to do her job, she worked the phones (since her email was off limits) and found a temporary gig as a research scientist at the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), a watchdog organization founded to hold the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accountable. Today she’s still there. “I had been focused on wanting to stay in academia at a university, but I realized that a nonprofit gives me a lot more freedom and is a lot less subject to political interference.”

Science in America

Federal budget cuts under the second Trump administration have systematically undermined science and research as we’ve known it in America. Dr. Terrell says her experience with Tulane wasn’t entirely related. “Louisiana desensitizes you to that because that just sort of feels normal. I’ve seen so much ridiculous shenanigans with respect to science and science integrity from our State Department of Environmental Quality and State Department of Health: cherry-picking data, just making absurd conclusions that are not supported by the data. The whole country feels like Louisiana right now. Louisiana shouldn’t be the norm,” she says.

Still, she believes Tulane’s administration has been emboldened by what’s going on nationally. “There is some influence of the federal administration and national politics, but a lot of it was timing, individual special interests, and ego. That’s a theme nationally, right? A small number of individuals having an outsize negative impact on science.”

Nuances of her silencing aside, Dr. Terrell finds it validating that her scientific research was never attacked. “Throughout all of this, they didn’t raise a single criticism of the research itself. It just made people uncomfortable, and it was going to mess up funding,” she notes. Dr. Terrell, a Tulane graduate, says she left on her own terms and remains affiliated with Tulane’s Cancer Center.

It’s about the jobs

In a Guardian article about Dr. Terrell’s resignation, a spokesperson for Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, says he never threatened to withhold state funding. “However,” the spokesperson adds, “I applaud Tulane for their actions standing up for our Louisiana businesses and jobs.”

Dr. Terrell’s environmental study is unique in that it was focused on jobs. “We want environmental regulators who make decisions based on objective science and who think about not only the distribution of harms, but also the distribution of economic benefits. That was really what my study focused on. That was also maybe part of the reason it got so much traction,” she says. People are used to thinking about and researching pollution and the petrochemical industry, and typically the emissions are justified in terms of money and economic benefit. “And if you say, actually these benefits are not going to the people who are experiencing the harms, all of a sudden, that threatens to undermine the only justification that they have.”

A year later

But that was then. And this is now. Not every scientist can afford to leave a job and, with budget cuts, not every scientist can find a new job. Dr. Terrell’s story is a good one. She landed well. Her work at EIP is focused on understanding the health impacts of industrial pollution, primarily in Louisiana, where she’s still based. She particularly enjoys that EIP is on the science end of the spectrum of environmental organizations. “As a scientist, the thing that I’ve always liked about them is that they’re focused on data and objective truth, as opposed to some other organizations are more policy focused or more social focused. We need all of that, but if you’re a scientist, the thing that is going to draw you in is the technical focus.”

Tell Congress: Protect Families From the Plastics and Petrochemical Industry

“When the air is bad, we can’t go outside to play,” Mason Wagner, second grader and Kids Clean Air Force member, wrote in testimony to EPA about their proposal to delay vital air pollution protections for cars and trucks. “My brother [who has asthma] has to stay inside so he doesn’t get sick. I feel sad when that happens because I want him to have fun with me.”

Mason prepared his testimony alongside dozens of Moms and kids from across the country who called out EPA for their latest effort to prioritize polluters over people’s health in this week’s public hearing. Strong tailpipe pollution protections finalized in 2024 were projected to prevent thousands of asthma attacks, save thousands of lives, and avoid billions in U.S. health care costs. Yet EPA wants to put implementation of these protections on hold for two years, meaning more dirty exhaust polluting our neighborhoods and our lungs.

Tell EPA: Families Can’t Afford to Delay Tailpipe Pollution Protections

The Trump EPA’s insistence on policies that, in essence, make it easier to get sick and harder to get well is maddening—and Moms have a lot of fury to unload. Here are some of our most compelling and relatable testimonies:

Barbara Weber, California

“I live in Santa Monica, a highly car-dependent city, less than a mile from the I-10 freeway. Last year, I lived through the devastating Los Angeles fires, when air quality reached dangerous levels for days on end. At times, ash fell from the sky like rain, and even indoors, the air burned my lungs and throat. That experience made it painfully clear how vulnerable our communities are when pollution accumulates—and how critical strong protections are when wildfire smoke compounds everyday vehicle emissions.”

Read Barbara’s full testimony.

Pita Juarez, Arizona

“I live just a mile from the I-10 freeway, a major interstate that stretches from California to Florida. The stretch of the 10 closest to where I live sees 300,000–400,000 cars per day. Tailpipe pollution is a very real threat for my community.

“My family has worked outdoors in Arizona’s sun and heat since immigrating to this country. My brothers spend long days outside, exposed to smog. My nieces and nephews play in this same air—air that too often fails to meet healthy standards. I worry about what their futures will look like if we don’t take stronger action now. The health-harming impacts of tailpipe pollution disproportionately impact communities like mine. We know that strong Clean Cars Standards markedly improve our air.”

Read Pita’s full testimony.

Shaina Oliver, Colorado

“As an Indigenous community member living with asthma, I am at risk of asthma attacks, stroke, and premature death. My youngest son, who is now 11 years old, was diagnosed with asthma last year. Indigenous, Black, and Brown communities are at higher risk of asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, leukemia, respiratory disease, adverse birth outcomes, and premature deaths than our white counterparts. Not to mention that when Indigenous families like mine leave the reservations we are redlined, segregated, or gentrified into areas with serious pollution problems. Because people of color are pushed to live near highways and industrial zoning areas that receive a hefty amount of traffic and particulate matter pollution, our communities—especially our children—face increased health risks.”

Read Shaina’s full testimony.

Kiya Stanford, Georgia

“Health impacts from exposure to tailpipe pollutants can range from respiratory illness like asthma to cognitive problems and even premature death. This hits home for me because as someone who attended primary and middle school next to major highways, I know the community-level impacts of exposure. At just five years old, my little brother was nearly hospitalized and put on a nebulizer from pneumonia after being seemingly healthy in the years prior. The only new factor was his environment: our elementary school nestled off I-285 and US 278 (Covington Highway).

“Asthma and other respiratory problems were something common among my peers during this time, and knowing what I know now, the commonality for all of us was our constant exposure to tailpipe pollutants each day when we went to school. Research shows that people of color, like me, have higher exposure to deadly soot. This is the case for many Title 1 Black and Brown students, and we need to do all we can to mitigate their exposure—not delay or weaken critical safeguards—so stories like my brother’s aren’t replicated.”

Read Kiya’s full testimony.

Elizabeth Bechard, Vermont

“As the mother of a child with a complex neuroimmune illness, I’m also especially concerned about the impact of air pollution on children’s immune systems and brains. Emerging research suggests that exposure to air pollution may be linked to increased risk of autoimmune diseases. And a recent study from the University of Finland suggests that traffic pollution may contribute to brain inflammation and neurodegenerative diseases by harming brain cells.

“When my son is in a flare of his illness, his brain becomes acutely inflamed, and we go to great lengths to protect him from anything that might make this inflammation worse, including exposure to unhealthy air. We live in Vermont, where tailpipe pollution isn’t our primary air pollution threat, but wildfire smoke is. I think often of families like ours whose medically complex children are exposed to unhealthy levels of traffic pollution on a daily basis.”

Read Elizabeth’s full testimony.

Tell EPA: Families Can’t Afford to Delay Tailpipe Pollution Protections

Georgia is one of the fastest-growing hubs for data centers in the nation. Development in Georgia has surged by 211% since 2023, driven by insatiable demand for artificial intelligence (AI). These enormous facilities, typically powered by dirty fossil fuels, are being built to house information technology infrastructure, a.k.a. massive racks of computers.

The QTS data center, near Atlanta’s Westside, is over 1 million square feet, and that’s not unusual. With facilities this massive come growing, now commonplace, concerns from nearby residents and environmental experts, particularly in underserved communities, about significant air pollution and energy usage.

Tell Congress: Protect Families From Dangerous Data Center Air Pollution

Big tech is flocking to Georgia because the state offers a compelling package for companies: abundant land, strong fiber-optic infrastructure, and open access to power and water, plus sales and use tax exemptions. Georgia Power also gives the facilities significantly discounted electricity rates compared to what residential customers pay. The result: more than $40 billion in data center money pouring into the state in just the first seven months of 2025.

The problem of industrial facilities in residential areas

There are already more than 100 fossil-fuel-powered data centers in Georgia, mostly in and around Atlanta. In late 2025, there were five new data center projects under construction in southern Fulton County, an area that includes unincorporated areas south of Atlanta, and dozens more are being proposed.

These facilities are ending up in residential areas with large Black and Latino populations because they are overwhelmingly zoned for “light industry.” These areas have historically been where economically marginalized communities and communities of color are located.

“A lot of these data centers are going into these light industrial zoning areas when really it should be heavy industrial and manufacturing because they are emitting the pollution that a heavy industrial facility emits,” says Jessica Mason Owens, a geographic information systems and data analyst with Science for Georgia

Compounding environmental injustice for Fulton County

Wanda Mosely, Deputy Policy Director with Black Voters Matter and a resident of southern Fulton County, says the data center conversation reminds her of the fight over heavy diesel truck traffic coming in and out in her neighborhood from 2017 to 2019, a time residents also started to see reports of high asthma rates in the area.

“Apparently no one planned to have an industrial area that wouldn’t be near a residential area, or an area where there are schools, churches, and parks. These data centers are going to exacerbate those differences in air quality and health between the people who live in southern Fulton County, a predominantly Black area, versus northern Fulton County, which is predominantly white,” she says.

Wanda points out that the uptick in data centers is just the latest example of communities of color having to endure companies that put “profit over people.” “It’s as if elected officials aren’t listening to scientists. They just don’t believe them when they say that this is going to be detrimental to the clean air we need to breathe,” she says.

Preventable health consequences

Recent research on data centers from Virginia Commonwealth University found that, in some cases, these facilities not only emit toxic pollution but also exceed the harmful emissions from nearby power plants. This pollution includes carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, soot, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, like benzene, and it can cause myriad health impacts, including increased risk of heart attacks, respiratory infections, asthma attacks, cancer, and even death.

Dr. Yolanda Whyte, a pediatrician and environmental health and special needs consultant based in Atlanta, offered expert testimony to the Atlanta City Council regarding a proposed data center in southwest Atlanta in March.

“My 20-year clinical expertise and research indicate that the current ‘infrastructure-to-injury’ pathway of these facilities poses a direct threat to the health of our residents, particularly African Americans, children, and neurodiverse individuals,” Dr. Whyte wrote in her testimony.

“Data centers in our community represent preventable corporate and environmental determinants of health,” she continued, adding that “data centers in Georgia are driving a massive 10 GW energy expansion that relies on methane-gas-burning plants, increasing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions. This strains our grid and increases our dependency on fossil fuels, worsening the climate crisis.”

Calling for transparency and clean energy

If communities want to better understand what kind of pollution the data centers are emitting, the first thing they should do is advocate for and demand transparency from the companies that operate them, according to Olivia Asher, a PhD candidate and presidential fellow in the Institute of Bioinformatics at the University of Georgia.

“A lot of times, what happens is everybody will say, ‘Oh, we have an NDA [nondisclosure agreement]. We can’t tell you where our electric power is coming from,” Olivia says. “We can’t tell you what chemicals we’re using for cooling. We can’t tell you anything. So one thing that communities could do when they develop local ordinances for their data centers is to ask for no NDAs and full transparency.”

Another avenue for better data center oversight is a state’s public utilities commission, the agency that regulates electric utilities and has major say over clean energy policy. In Georgia, this agency is officially called the Public Service Commission (PSC), and after a special election last year, it has two new members who campaigned on fighting for transparency in state energy decisions and affordability for local families: Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson. Commissioners have the unique power to direct utilities to prioritize cheaper cleaner energy and battery storage as they scramble to meet all these new and planned data centers’ massive electricity needs. They can set rules that shift the burden of paying for new energy infrastructure from families to the data centers themselves. They can also block or end discounted electricity rates for these energy-guzzling facilities.

Moms’ Georgia Organizer, Kiya Stanford, is fast at work helping Atlanta residents share their air quality and environmental justice concerns about the fossil-fuel-powered data center explosion at local government and PSC meetings. She says, “We need to connect the dots between industrial development, environmental pollution, and our right to breathe clean air.”

Tell Congress: Protect Families From Dangerous Data Center Air Pollution

Current law gives communities a chance to consider air quality impacts and alternatives before industry starts building or expands major pollution sources. But a new proposal from EPA pushes the mute button on public input. It would allow toxic enterprises to enter our neighborhoods unannounced and lock us into decades of health risks without any transparency or democratic process.

That’s why I joined Moms from across the country last week to speak out at EPA’s hearing on this Orwellian proposal.

Tell EPA: Families Deserve a Voice Before Polluters Break Ground

To put a finer point on what is happening: EPA is trying to change the definition of “begin actual construction” to allow major polluters to excavate land and put in foundations, structures, and utilities without even notifying people about their plans. Does this seem just to you?

Once the polluting corporation has invested millions of dollars in the new facility, it becomes virtually impossible to stop it. This means more of these dirty facilities and more life-altering illnesses for children and families, including

• families where I live in Virginia, where data centers are blanketing the air with soot and formaldehyde, linked to cardiovascular and respiratory illness and dementia,
• parents in the Houston Ship Channel, where children face leukemia due to 1,3-butadiene exposures from the petrochemical facilities surrounding their homes, and
• anyone living in Los Angeles who spent Memorial Day weekend in evacuation shelters amid a whopping four simultaneous chemical disasters.

Join Moms today in calling out this latest Trump EPA effort to dismantle our nation’s health and safety rules. It’s well past time for EPA to return to its historic mission of protecting the environment and people’s health.

Tell EPA: Families Deserve a Voice Before Polluters Break Ground

This article is part of our occasional series The Climate Questionnaire, where we talk with authors, writers, filmmakers, podcasters, and other content creators about their work illustrating the human impacts of air pollution and global warming.

Danica Novgorodoff is an artist and writer of books for all ages who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. In 2019, she attended the NYC Climate Strike, part of the largest global climate protest in history, with her newborn, and the experience deepened her thinking about what the climate crisis meant for her two young daughters’ futures. That’s when she teamed up with environmental journalist Meera Subramanian to write and illustrate A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis, a graphic novel following four of the teens who helped organize the Climate Strike. The book, published in March 2026, weaves climate science and solutions into its storytelling and stunning visuals—my artist tween and I could not put it down!

We talked to Danica about her winding career path and her belief that artists play a crucial role in creating positive change.

How did you become an author and illustrator?

I carved this job out little by little. When I first moved to New York City, where I lived for 16 years, I worked for a graphic novel imprint of Macmillan Publishers. I had interviewed to do artwork on a book they were publishing, but I was considered too green an artist and didn’t get that gig. Instead, I joined the team as a graphic designer and worked on the publishing side of books for a few years.

Later, I went freelance, and over time, I’ve tried to shift the balance of freelance graphic design and illustration work toward more book projects of my own choosing. I still do all kinds of design gigs to pay the bills, but my true passion is making and illustrating books that tell important cultural and environmental stories.

Is there a specific moment when you decided you wanted to use your skills to raise awareness about climate change?

I once spent a couple of months living as a writer in residence at Bernheim Forest and Arboretum, a 16,000-acre forest in Kentucky, and felt very connected to the natural landscape there. I began thinking about creating a graphic novel about climate change that would inspire people to take positive action. But when I began doing research on the climate crisis, I became quite overwhelmed and figured I’d need to spend the next 10 years studying to feel ready to write this book. So I asked Meera to collaborate on the project, and she helped me craft the text.

Meera and I centered our story on four youth climate activists who helped organize the 2019 strike in New York I attended, and interspersed well-researched information about the causes, implications, and solutions to the climate crisis throughout the book.

What do you love about your job?

I love almost everything about my job! (Except not getting a regular paycheck.) I get to work on projects that are important and meaningful to me, and to communicate with people through my art. Working at home and on my own schedule suits me well, as I am pretty disciplined about it but also like the flexibility of building my own hours, especially now that I’m a mom. I enjoy spending stretches of time alone, so not working on a team or in an office is also a perk, though I do enjoy collaborating with writers and editors.

Of course, being an artist also comes with frequent doses of uncertainty and overwhelming self-doubt, since I’m not necessarily being handed a job description with concrete expectations. But overall, I love the creative process—being inspired by other artists’ work, coming up with new ideas, developing stories, and using hands-on materials to create the artwork.

Do you feel like your art makes a difference? To whom?

I hope so! It’s hard to know, since once a book goes out into the world, you often have no idea who reads it and what they think of it. When I do get the occasional note from a reader, or words of encouragement, or a good review, it means a lot to me. I hope that A Better World Is Possible helps people understand the complexities of the climate crisis in a very accessible way, shows that solutions are out there, and inspires them to take action. One message the book puts forth is that everyone has a place in the climate movement, whether as a protester, a lawyer, an artist, a singer, a gardener, a community member, a writer, a religious leader, a student, a political organizer, a tree-hugger, an educator, a fundraiser, a volunteer, and so on and so forth. Everyone has talents, interests, and skills that can be useful in the fight against climate change.

Do you hope kids might want to grow up and have your job?

It’s so hard to know what this job and the book industry will look like in a couple decades, with so much technological and economic upheaval. But humans have always needed art and stories and always will. It’s how we build meaning, share experiences, advocate for positive change, create empathy, question the status quo, explore possibilities, and imagine a better world. So yes, I hope many, many kids will grow up to make art and books.

Tell Congress: Support Mental Wellness for Communities Facing Weather Disasters