Investigative reporting about industrial pollution is an old tradition in the petrochemical corridor along the Texas-Louisiana coast. The late Harold Scarlett, a legendary journalist for the Houston Post, wrote an award-winning series on air and water pollution in 1966, four years before the Post’s editor decided to make him one of the nation's first full-time environmental reporters. During the ensuing decades, other reporters in the region carried out their own investigations. Now, nearly 40 years after Scarlett's groundbreaking work, the Houston Chronicle has added a dramatic new twist that illuminates the stubborn persistence of some environmental problems. Enlisting the help of citizen volunteers, the Chronicle conducted its own monitoring of 18 airborne toxic chemicals. The results form the centerpiece of a five-day series that started with a special section examining the risks encountered by people living near polluting industries. Collecting air samples in neighborhoods near oil and chemical plants in Houston and three other Southeast Texas cities, the Chronicle concluded that "the region's refining and petrochemical industries are in some places contributing to what leading experts on toxic air pollution would consider a risky load of 'air toxics,' substances that can cause cancer, kidney and liver damage, or other serious health effects in places where people live and work, and where children play." The newspaper reported that one Houston neighborhood – featured in a 1997 Chronicle series about worrisome levels of air pollution in residential areas near industries—still had air last summer that was "so laden with toxic chemicals that it was dangerous to breathe." The project was led by environment writer Dina Cappiello and photographer Carlos Antonio Rios, with contributions from other staff members. The newspaper's follow-up to the series has already included several articles, plus editorial cartoons and a lengthy editorial decrying inadequate regulation. http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/04/toxic/index.html