The following is a hypothetical deposition transcript. Dr. Amara Osei is a fictional character. The clinical data, environmental measurements, air quality findings, and regulatory actions referenced in her testimony are real and sourced from publicly available records. Every exhibit cited corresponds to an actual document. The witness is invented. The air is not.
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS HOUSTON DIVISION
In re: Clean Air Act Section 202 Litigation MDL No. 26-1547
VIDEOTAPED DEPOSITION OF AMARA OSEI, M.D. February 25, 2026 — Houston, Texas Reported by: Linda Moreau, CSR, RPR
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. VIDAL
Q: Dr. Osei, please state your current position.
A: I'm a board-certified pediatric pulmonologist. I've practiced at a community pulmonary clinic affiliated with Texas Children's Hospital in Pasadena, Texas, for nineteen years.
Q: And the patient population you serve. Can you describe it geographically?
A: The majority of my patients live in communities adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel. Cloverleaf, Channelview, Galena Park, Harrisburg, Manchester. Fifty-two miles of industrial corridor. Over two hundred petrochemical facilities.1
Q: What is the demographic composition of that patient base?
A: Predominantly Hispanic. In Cloverleaf, 79.4 percent of residents identify as Hispanic. More than a third of the combined Cloverleaf-Channelview population, roughly 69,800 people, are children under eighteen.2 Approximately 54 percent of Cloverleaf residents lack health insurance. That is more than three times the statewide uninsured rate.3
Q: What does that insurance gap mean clinically?
A: It means I am often the first physician these children see for a respiratory complaint. There is no preventive care upstream. They arrive after the damage has begun.
Q: I'd like to direct your attention to Exhibit 7, the American Lung Association's 2023 State of the Air report. Are you familiar with this document?
A: Yes.
Q: What grade did Harris County receive for air quality?
A: F.4
Q: Let me ask about the specific pollutants your patients are exposed to. What does the data show?
A: The primary concerns are fine particulate matter, PM2.5, coarse particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen dioxide, and ground-level ozone.5 In the Harrisburg and Manchester neighborhoods, which are part of my referral area, particulate matter pollution burdens run approximately fifty to sixty times the average for the broader eight-county Houston region.6
Q: Fifty to sixty times.
A: Yes.
MR. HATCH: Objection. The witness is a clinician, not an air quality scientist. She's reading from someone else's analysis.
MS. VIDAL: She's testifying to the environmental conditions affecting her patient population, which goes directly to clinical causation. I'll rephrase.
Q: Dr. Osei, in your clinical experience, how does ambient air quality manifest in the children you treat?
A: The most immediate indicator is rescue inhaler use. Albuterol. When a child requires their rescue inhaler more than twice per week, clinical guidelines direct us to escalate to daily controller therapy. In my practice, during ozone season, which in Houston now extends well beyond summer, I see children using their rescue inhalers daily. Sometimes multiple times daily. Seven-year-olds. Nine-year-olds. The albuterol refill frequency in my patient population functions, effectively, as an air quality monitor.
Q: You said ozone season now extends beyond summer?
A: Houston is one of the most ozone-polluted cities in the country.7 Long-term ozone exposure causes ongoing respiratory decline, steady loss of lung function.8 Climate change is lengthening the high-ozone window. The annual period of peak pediatric respiratory risk is growing.
Q: I'd like to turn to Exhibit 14, the EPA's final rule published February 18, 2026, rescinding the greenhouse gas endangerment finding for vehicles. Are you familiar with this action?
A: I am.
Q: The EPA has stated that this action, and I'm quoting, "does not affect regulations on any traditional air pollutants."9 Do you have a clinical response to that characterization?
MR. HATCH: Objection. Calls for a legal conclusion. The witness is not a regulatory expert.
MS. VIDAL: I'm asking for her clinical assessment, not a legal opinion.
A: My concern is not carbon dioxide in my patients' lungs. Carbon dioxide is not what sends a child to the emergency department at two in the morning unable to breathe. What sends that child to the emergency department is particulate matter. Nitrogen oxides. These come from the same combustion sources, particularly heavy-duty diesel trucks, that the greenhouse gas standards were designed to regulate. The vehicles that run cleaner on greenhouse gases also emit fewer co-pollutants. When you remove the regulatory pressure toward cleaner engines, you remove pressure on the pollutants that are measurable in my patients' spirometry readings.
Q: Are heavy-duty trucks a significant pollution source in your patients' communities?
A: Industrial sites along the Ship Channel generate heavy-duty truck traffic that passes directly through residential neighborhoods. Past homes. Past schools. Past childcare centers.10 An Environmental Defense Fund study found that 46 percent of Houston schools and childcare centers had nitrogen dioxide levels above typical citywide levels.11
Q: Nearly half.
A: Nearly half.
Q: Dr. Osei, I want to ask about monitoring. If you wanted to check real-time air quality data for the specific neighborhoods where your patients live, could you?
A: In many cases, no. The closest state air monitor to Cloverleaf does not measure particulate matter or sulfur dioxide. Two of the six pollutants the EPA itself has identified as most threatening to human health.12
Q: So the monitor nearest to a community where a third of residents are children—
A: Does not measure the pollutant most directly associated with pediatric respiratory disease. Correct.
(Pause.)
MS. VIDAL: Let the record reflect the witness has paused.
A: I'm fine. Continue.
Q: Dr. Osei, the EPA released a report in April 2023, I'm marking this as Exhibit 19, documenting that children are uniquely vulnerable to climate change impacts, that these impacts leave lifelong consequences, and that Black, Indigenous, and children of color from low-income households are disproportionately exposed.13 Were you aware of this report?
A: Yes. I cited it in a grand rounds presentation last year.
Q: The agency that published that report is the same agency that finalized the rescission we've been discussing?
MR. HATCH: Objection. Argumentative.
MS. VIDAL: Withdrawn. Dr. Osei, one final area. The EPA chose not to finalize a scientific conclusion that climate change does not endanger public health.14 They rescinded the finding on jurisdictional grounds, not scientific ones. As a physician who treats the children this science describes, what is your understanding of what that means?
MR. HATCH: Objection. Calls for speculation. Calls for a legal conclusion. Beyond the scope of this witness's expertise.
MS. VIDAL: I'll rephrase. Dr. Osei, in your clinical judgment, has the science describing the relationship between air pollution and pediatric respiratory disease changed since February 18, 2026?
A: No.
Q: Has anything changed?
(Long pause.)
MR. HATCH: Objection. Vague.
A: The science has not changed. The air has not changed. My patients have not changed. What has changed is whether anyone is required to do anything about it.
MR. HATCH: Move to strike. Non-responsive.
MS. VIDAL: I have nothing further.
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Going off the record. The time is 3:47 p.m.
(Off the record.)
(Back on the record.)
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Back on the record. The time is 4:02 p.m.
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. HATCH
Q: Dr. Osei, you are not an epidemiologist, correct?
A: Correct.
Q: You have not personally conducted air quality measurements outside your patients' homes?
A: No.
Q: You cannot state with medical certainty that any individual patient's asthma is caused by emissions from a specific facility along the Houston Ship Channel?
A: I cannot attribute a specific child's disease to a specific facility. That is correct.
Q: And the EPA's final rule addresses greenhouse gas emissions, not the criteria pollutants you've been discussing today?
A: That is what the rule states.
Q: Nothing further.
MS. VIDAL: Brief redirect, if I may.
REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY MS. VIDAL
Q: Dr. Osei, Mr. Hatch asked whether you can attribute a specific child's asthma to a specific facility. Can you tell us what the life expectancy differential is between the communities where your patients live and wealthier neighborhoods fifteen miles away?
MR. HATCH: Objection. Beyond the scope of cross.
MS. VIDAL: It goes directly to the clinical significance of environmental exposure in this population.
A: Up to twenty years.15
Q: Twenty years shorter.
A: Yes.
Q: You've been treating children in these communities for nineteen years?
A: Yes.
Q: Some of the children you treated in your first year of practice would be adults now. Mid-twenties.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know how they're doing?
(Pause.)
MR. HATCH: Objection. Relevance.
A: Some of them I still see. They bring me their children now.
MS. VIDAL: Nothing further.
The deposition concluded at 4:11 p.m.
The original of this transcript was sealed under the Protective Order entered in MDL No. 26-1547.
It was not sealed well enough.
Footnotes
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Texas Tribune, "How Texas air quality monitoring fails Latino communities," March 14, 2024. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/14/texas-air-monitoring-tceq-cloverleaf-houston-ship-channel/ ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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Ibid., cross-referenced with U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data for Cloverleaf CDP, Texas. ↩
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American Lung Association, "State of the Air 2023," Harris County, Texas. ↩
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NRDC, "Toxic Air Pollution in the Houston Ship Channel: Disparities Show Urgent Need for Environmental Justice." https://www.nrdc.org/resources/toxic-air-pollution-houston-ship-channel-disparities-show-urgent-need-environmental ↩
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Ibid. Analysis of TCEQ point source emissions inventory data for Harrisburg/Manchester. ↩
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University of Houston, "A Cutting-Edge Approach to Tackling Pollution in Houston," November 2023. https://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2023/november-2023/11062023-pinpointing-air-pollution-houston ↩
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Houston Area Survey, "What Are the Health Risks of Houston's Air Pollution?" https://www.houstonareasurvey.org/what-are-the-health-risks-of-houstons-air-pollution/ ↩
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U.S. EPA, Final Rule: Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, February 18, 2026, EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0278. ↩
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Environmental Defense Fund, "New tools reveal Houston's pollution." https://www.edf.org/airqualitymaps/houston ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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Texas Tribune, March 14, 2024. ↩
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U.S. EPA, "Climate Change and Children's Health," April 25, 2023. Tracked by Harvard Environmental & Energy Law Program. https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/epa-proposed-repeal-of-endangerment-finding/ ↩
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Morgan Lewis, "EPA Rescinds 2009 Endangerment Finding, Eliminates Federal Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Standards," February 2026. https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2026/02/epa-rescinds-2009-endangerment-finding-eliminates-federal-vehicle-greenhouse-gas-standards ↩
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Amnesty International report on Houston Ship Channel communities, cited in Environmental Health News, "Neglected and exposed: Toxic air lingers in a Texas Latino community," March 2024. https://www.ehn.org/gulf-coast-petrochemical-air-pollution ↩