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“When it was worse, back in the ’50s and ’60s,” said Mouton, “we had to evacuate.” These days, he and his neighbors are told by safety officials to “shelter in place.” They must stay inside their homes, turn off the air conditioning, and close all the windows.

Mouton lives near the western shore of Lake Charles in southwestern Louisiana, where the landscape is dominated by an oil refinery, petrochemical plants, vinyl factories, and a cement plant. His home is in Mossville, a modest African-American community adjacent to the industrialized town of Westlake. Mossville is a close-knit and polite place, where residents often encounter distant relatives around the corner and families grow fruits and vegetables in their backyards. Mossville’s harvest, however, is tainted. Tests have shown that residents’ blood carries triple the average national load of dioxin, a toxic known to cause skin lesions, liver problems, and cancer.

Most families nearest to Westlake’s industrial contamination were relocated in the 1990s. But remaining residents say they have spent decades battling noxious odors, health concerns, and indifferent government agencies. Now, with the help of a scientist named Wilma Subra — a MacArthur “genius” award winner who has assisted communities from North Texas to San Francisco to Pennsylvania — the people of Mossville are hoping to finally achieve environmental justice.

“Wilma Subra has helped us out tremendously,” said Mouton, who serves as president of Mossville Environmental Action Now. “She double-checks the numbers we get from the chemical people. If there have been some numbers that have been mistaken from industry, then Wilma straightens them out.”

“Wilma is a beautiful lady,” said Mossville resident Delma Bennett, 66. “I really think she’s God-sent.”

Subra, 66, specializes in unearthing information about hazardous substances. She can dig into technical reports and piece together the facts that explain why a community is noticing a foul smell in the air, a bad taste in the water, or frequent illness among neighbors. Subra has the rare ability to link obscure scientific details with tangible public health threats and then to explain her findings in plain English. She is willing to pinpoint sources of contamination even when government regulatory agencies can’t — or won’t.

Her face is framed by baby-blonde wisps of hair, and she speaks quietly. But don’t be misled. Beneath that mild-mannered demeanor is a laser-sharp mind. It’s 9 a.m. and Subra has already fielded urgent calls from the office of Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Speaker of the House, and others. Now she is explaining the details of an involved environmental case she completed years ago. She rattles off numbers and chemicals and industrial processes that would make most people’s heads spin. Subra’s fierce intelligence is coupled with steely persistence in the face of harassment or resistance.

Her technical skill and determination to assist communities and government agencies alike have taken Subra around the country. She has helped Mossville understand its dioxin risk and aided DISH, Texas, in asking the right questions about Barnett Shale pollution. She’s examined shipyard contamination in San Francisco and lead dust from Chicago smelters. She’s chaired advisory committees for state and federal environmental agencies and testified to Congress about the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster. Soon she’ll head to Pennsylvania to review the state’s practices for hydraulic fracturing.

Subra grew up in southern Louisiana, the eldest of six sisters. Her maternal grandfather was a French-speaking oysterman who married a Swiss immigrant. Subra’s father was an accomplished jack-of-all trades: inventor, shipbuilder, and equipment manufacturer. During the summers, Subra helped out in his chemistry lab.

She got her first taste of public service in the mid-1960s while studying microbiology and chemistry at what is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Townspeople came knocking on the college science department’s doors, worried about the deterioration of the nearby Vermilion River. “Dead cows were floating downstream from rendering plants that discharged their wastes into the river,” said Subra. “Nights and weekends, I’d go out and help people understand what was going on in the river system.”

Subra soon married and moved south to New Iberia, where her husband worked as a medical technologist. After she completed dual masters’ degrees in chemistry and microbiology, Subra took a job at Gulf South Research Institute, where she assisted with studies for the National Cancer Institute and helped develop guidelines and equipment for purposes like wastewater monitoring and toxicology. She spent 14 years there as a chemist, microbiologist, and biostatistician, including a few years leading the analytical biochemistry department.

“The entire time I was there, people would come and ask for help,” said Subra. In her spare time, she visited those communities and helped residents understand the issues so they could make informed decisions about the next steps to protect their health and environment.

While at the institute, Subra often led “quick-response projects” for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This involved bringing a mobile lab and team out to sample a community’s air and soil and collect residents’ blood and urine for analysis. But the process frustrated her.

“People were a code number. All they received back was a summary of the results,” she said. “You couldn’t go back and visit with them and look at their individual data. You couldn’t say, ‘You have an elevated level of this chemical; you may want to look at where that exposure is coming from.’ There wasn’t anybody working with the community to help them understand.”

In 1981, with three children at home, Subra left the institute and formed a company that provides technical assistance on environmental issues. Her firm occasionally gets assignments from small-business clients concerned about contamination in their products, such as a food manufacturer troubled by mold. But most of Subra’s energy goes toward helping communities and nonprofit organizations. At any given time, she’s got about 40 active projects. Subra turns no one away. “Sometimes they have to wait a day or two, but I’ve never had to tell anybody no,” she said, breaking into a smile.