To escape a surge in Chicago's gang violence, Natalie Ammons and her family moved in 1979 to a home just a few hundred yards from one of the world's biggest steel mills.
On some nights, when the Gary mill pounded its red-hot steel slabs into thin sheets, she'd see flames shoot up through the smokestacks. She'd go to bed to the sound of rumblings from the mill and the smell of rotten eggs. In the morning, she'd find greasy, black particles scattered on her lawn, sidewalk and car.
Ammons, 71, said she never thought much about air pollution, not even as her coughing and chest colds got worse and worse. She was too busy catching the train to Chicago to run document retrieval for a big law firm.
What really scared her -- and transformed her into a clean-air activist -- was the first time she saw the breathing machines that her three great-grandchildren, Adonis, Alivia and Eli, use to recover from asthma attacks that doctors say are more common among children in Gary than nearby towns.
That was two years ago. Adonis is now 5 years old. Twins Alivia and Eli are 4.
"You have not lived until you see the three of them sitting there on masks and they can't move until they get the...
Source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/06/28/gary-works-us-steel-nippon/
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