It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

For years, Hazel Foster had wanted to buy a home in the East Calumet neighborhood of East Chicago, so when the opportunity arose... Yeah, I thought it was a blessing.

30 miles from the loop, East Chicago is right across the border in Indiana.

It's a city of 30,000, with mostly black and Latino residents, a third live in poverty.

When he was growing up in the 1950s, this neighborhood, with its rows of bungalow homes, was off-limits

to African-Americans like Azelle. But 11 years ago, he finally got a chance to buy a home here.

He had a steady job working for the city. He'd mapped out a future in his head.

Well, this was going to be another starter home for me. I was going to stay here for a while,

and then I was going to seek a bigger and a better home. But a decade after he moved in, Azelle's neighborhood was suddenly

all over the news, and not for a good reason. Well, residents in the Calumet neighborhood of East

Chicago have been living on land contaminated by lead from old factories for decades. The Environmental Protection Agency has been aware of the problem

and actively testing swell there since the 1980s.

He couldn't believe the home he'd been so excited about

was sitting on top of polluted land.

And he couldn't believe the government had known about the contamination for years

and hadn't told him about it sooner.

Curious City has gotten a lot of questions about Azelle's neighborhood, people wondering,

why is East Chicago so polluted? How is the pollution affected people living there? I'm a reporter

Kevin Stark. Today, we're going to focus on Azelle's story. But there are many stories

like his in East Chicago, people whose homes, whose lives, and whose health have been impacted

by pollution from industrial sites. And we'll answer some of those questions Curious City has received.

How did East Chicago get this way? And what are your options if you're in a

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