From almost every street in one East End neighborhood you can see, or smell, what has so many people worried there.

KHOU-TV

The refineries are a stone's throw from the neighborhood.

“We’re surrounded with chemicals, surrounded with them,” resident Mary Guerra said.

Manchester hugs the Houston Ship Channel, where refineries and other business run 24 hours a day.

It’s there that some stats show that cancer rates are abnormally high and incomes drastically low.

People like Eugene Barragan blame toxic fumes for killing several of his friends and relatives.

“Actually there’s really nothing you can do,” Barragan said. “It’s out of our control unless you stay inside like hermits or walk around with space outfits on.”

Many people are simply too poor or tired to move.

“If I was a little younger I would just move,” Guerra said.

That is why environmental groups began knocking on doors Sunday, asking people to show up at a hearing the Environmental Protection Agency will hold there later this month.

Activists say the EPA doesn’t realize so many people live in the refineries’ shadows and allows them to release too many toxins near people’s homes.

“The EPA has to give them the same environmental and social justice that it gives for everybody else,” Matthew Tejada said.  “They cannot disregard these people who live in these neighborhoods.”

People like Juan Castillo, who has trouble breathing. It is unclear if his condition is being caused by nearby refineries, but he and other families who live here will at least have a chance to have their say.