In the 1980s the City of Dallas forced the closure of three lead smelters in West Dallas and East Oak Cliff because they endangered public health and poisoned residents.

In 2024 it is time to close two 80-year-old asphalt shingle factories still operating in Central Dallas: GAF in West Dallas and TAMKO in Joppa. In 2024 asphalt is the new lead.

Both factories should have been forced to close decades ago. But the City of Dallas has not followed through. Our actions are aimed at pushing the City to do the right thing.

Two 80-year-old asphalt shingle factories still operate in Central Dallas: GAF in West Dallas and TAMKO in Joppa.

Both are 80 years old.

Both factories operate in Black and Brown neighborhoods because of racist zoning.

Both factories are among the city’s largest industrial air polluters.

Both factories have no modern scrubbers to control their sulfur dioxide pollution emissions.

Both factories are classified as “non-conforming” businesses, meaning they should be targeted for closure.

Both have decades of public nuisance complaints.

Both factories are owned by wealthy, out-of-town white families profiting from the poisoning of Black and Brown Dallas residents.

That's why they are Dallas’s Toxic Twins.

Join us in pushing the City to do the right thing.

GAF and TAMKO have been polluting West Dallas and Joppa for too long. Despite Joppa and the Singleton Corridor comprising only 0.15% of the population of Dallas, the majority of whom identify as Black or Brown, nearly 10.5% of Dallas' industrial pollution is dumped on these two neighborhoods (TCEQ 2022 Annual Emissions Report). This is a dictionary example of environmental injustice, describing disproportionate exposure to environmental pollution in low-income, Black, or Brown communities.

A Texas A&M health study found asthma rates 2 to 3 times higher in Joppa than Dallas County or Texas averages. A similar health study is in the works for West Dallas. As we await results, asphalt continues to rain on West Dallas residents from GAF smokestacks.

With neighbors having no protections from legal or illegal industrial polluters, we must rise together to protect neighborhood self-determination and the right to breathe clean air.