Toxic Waste Burning

New Jersey chemical plants create notoriously toxic waste that can cause a variety of diseases, including cancer. A federal permit now being considered would allow tons of toxic wastes from New Jersey, Los Angeles and elsewhere to be transported into San Diego and burned here.

A hearing by the San Diego City Council to determine the city’s role in the fate of the proposal by GA Technologies Inc. of La Jolla is scheduled for Monday.

The public record on the proposal is littered with apparent inconsistencies. For example, an article by Janny Scott in The Times June 23 quoted a company spokesman as saying, “The test burns would occur once or twice a month. . . . The amounts of waste would be small . . . ranging from perhaps one pound to a dozen barrels.”

These amounts are much less than those mentioned in the draft federal permit for the operation, released for public comment recently by the Environmental Protection Agency. Depending on the density of the waste, the proposed permit allows burning of 60 to 80 tons per test burn. The “dozen barrels” attributed to the company spokesman differs from the permit by a factor of about 30. “Perhaps one pound” is off by a factor of 120,000.

When the Times reporter asked why the toxic waste was to be burned in San Diego, the spokesman replied “the equipment is already here. We could not afford to tear it down and move it.”

The proposed site, which is within a few thousand feet of hospitals, businesses and a major university, is an area of fog, low clouds and inversions that can trap pollutants, raising toxicity. Nothing in the EPA permit prohibits burning under these conditions.

Choice of a site to burn toxic wastes should be made only after completion of an independent environmental impact report that fully examines the impact of meteorological conditions. An environmental impact report and reduction of the massive quantities of highly toxic wastes noted in the EPA permit are needed before the City Council or EPA should make a decision.

A distinguished panel of scientists convened by the EPA to examine the safety of toxic waste burners reported in April, 1985, that the toxicity of chemical discharges from toxic waste burners is largely unknown, and tests of health effects on humans are unreliable. It would be negligent for the City Council or the EPA to approve a permit that would make San Diego citizens into guinea pigs for a commercial venture.

The council and the EPA should prohibit transportation and burning here of cancer-causing wastes from New Jersey or anywhere else.

CEDRIC GARLAND

La Jolla