CAMERON PARISH, La. ( Louisiana Illuminator ) - Communities around Louisiana, in a bid to get more information about the environmental and health impacts of industrial pollution, are taking data collection into their own hands — despite a law restricting how their research findings can be used to enforce state regulations.

The practice is called community, citizen or participatory science, and it involves data collected from non-scientists that’s passed along to researchers who use their expertise to study and understand what they mean. From air quality to fisheries impacts, the grassroots-gathered information has the potential to inform the public about impacts of nearby industry.

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