Air quality being tested around Winton Terrace

Описание: WINTON HILLS, Ohio (WKRC) - What's in the air? That's the question many people living in and around Winton Terrace and Spring Grove Village want to know.

There are complaints that the pollution is so bad in that area, it's a struggle breathe. Now, they're being heard as air quality tests are underway.

Living at Winton Terrace comes with a factory view.

"The air? It stinks. Like, it's the smell. You can go out of the community, you always know when you coming back in because that smell is there," Moneaca Collins, the former president of the Winton Terrace Resident Council said.

Collins lived in this neighborhood for three years. The mother of four believes something is in the air thanks to the manufacturing plants nearby.

"The different chemicals that are going in the air. Whatever they're mixing up to make the products that they're making, whether it be the gas or whether it be BSFA, it's them chemicals," she said.

Collins says some of her children have respiratory issues. After complaints, the air is now being tested.

"We're trying to be proactive, and we did monitoring for a long period of time, for over 21 years out there. U.S. EPA back in...1997, 1998, they did a very comprehensive, year-long study with cutting-edge technology to measure everything, and they said basically the levels they were seeing were similar to other urban areas," said Bradley Miller, the assistant director of the Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency.

Of the six companies across the street from Winton Terrace, three of them have received air quality violations in recent years. Some of those violations range from not filling out paperwork to exceeding emissions standards, but health officials say everyone is now back in compliance.

"Our agency has only received three...odor complaints so far this year from that area, so we've not really seen an uptick. You know, 15 years ago, we were seeing close to 100 complaints, so the numbers have really dropped off," said Miller.

The complaints may have dwindled, but Collins believes something is still in the air.

"Of course they know it's in the air, so they're going to start fixing things, so it's going to look like things are fixed right now to make everybody go away, but I still feel like there's still some more intensive things to be done," she said.

County commissioners will see the first results Wednesday. The second batch will come sometime in January.