Air pollution is a perpetual issue for the mostly Latino community in Manchester encircled by industrial facilities

When water reached the front steps of her house, driven by the storm, Yenny Ramirez was worried about more than Harvey’s floods. A strange smell drifted through her neighbourhood.

“The odour was extremely strong, thick,” she said. “During the storm we were inside. We couldn’t really go outside. At one point we turned off the A/C just so the smell wouldn’t be so bad.”

The Houston suburb of Manchester did not suffer the extensive flooding brought by Harvey around the region. But rainfall did cause a tank failure at a refinery, leading to a leak of chemicals including an estimated 1,881lbs of benzene, a carcinogen – just a fraction of nearly 5.3m lbs of unauthorised pollutants that were attributed to the storm, according to an Environmental Defense Fund analysis.

The leaks underlined that Harvey’s damage was not only at ground level, but advocates and residents fear that the city’s full attention will be on reconstruction and flood prevention – and that air quality won’t be a priority. While August’s rains inundated rich and poor alike, air pollution in Houston disproportionately affects low-income, mainly Latino communities next to industrial facilities, such as Manchester.

Sandra Martinez and her husband paid $700 a month for the three-bed house in Manchester where they lived with their six children. “The rent, it was so reasonable,” she said. But air pollution after Harvey drove them out.

“You could literally smell it in the house too and I was like, Lord Jesus, I just pray for my kids. Because you don’t know if there was a chemical spill,” said Martinez, a clerk at a dry cleaning firm. She said the family was “constantly checking” the stove and the boiler, searching for sources of the foul air. They realized that outside pollution had swept into the kitchen, living room and bedrooms.

After family members suffered health problems, such as bronchitis, asthma, nausea, nasal congestion, nosebleeds, headaches and stomach aches, they decided the miasma during the storm was the last straw.