SOUTH GATE, Calif. — In Los Angeles, you can take a tour of celebrity homes and historical landmarks. For the more socially conscious crowds, there is a tour led by Communities For Better Environments whose mission is to raise awareness about the experience that residents live in pollution-heavy neighborhoods of southeast Los Angeles.

The nearly three-hour bus ride highlights and immerses visitors into the community, and takes them to sites that have been historically known to cause pollution to surrounding neighborhoods.

Among the stops is a local refinery that exudes a pungent stench of tar and petroleum, a playground that sits where a five-story pile of freeway rubble from the 1994 Northridge earthquake loomed for years and even the now-defunct Exide Technologies plant that was allowed to abandon its former battery-recycling plant.