In a raspy voice, longtime family farmer Victoria Trinko spoke alongside environmental advocates and researchers Thursday, detailing how her life has changed in the three shorts years since a frac sand mine began operating within a half mile of her Chippewa County farm.

“I could feel the dust clinging to my face and the grit in my teeth,” Trinko said on a conference call with reporters to release the “Communities at Risk: Frac Sand Mining in the Upper Midwest” report.

By the end of 2012, she was diagnosed with asthma and had started to use an inhaler. She has installed a $1,000 air filtration system in her home. When her daughter visited from Australia, she told her the house smelt like a barn that had just been swept out.

Trinko has not opened the windows of her house since the fall of 2012.

“The billowing of silica sand has not abated since the mine was constructed in 2011. One truck passes down my road every three minutes or less,” she said. “My life has been negatively impacted by this industry. I am resisting the idea of moving. But a person’s life is priceless.”