Invisible Toxic Emissions Cast a Cloud Over ‘Clean’ Firms
The collection of buildings on West Bernardo Drive is a showcase of clean industry: manicured lawns and freshly planted trees sweep up to angular structures where hundreds of workers assemble television parts and electronic circuitry.
There are no clouds of menacing black smoke coming from the factory stacks of Unisys, Sony, Northern Telecom and Hewlett-Packard, all situated a mile up the hill from a major housing development, gasoline stations and several new hotels.
But the suburban scene doesn’t mean these high-tech factories west of Interstate 15 are pollution-free. In fact, recently released government figures show that the four companies released nearly 50,000 pounds--about 25 tons--of colorless toxic substances into the air in 1987.
Figures Compiled Nationwide
And they are far from the worst. In all, the county’s largest manufacturers spewed 2,519 to 2,534 tons of toxics and carcinogens into San Diego skies during 1987, according to the figures, released under a new federal Environmental Protection Agency program.
The San Diego numbers were among those compiled by the EPA nationwide to determine how much toxic material industry is dumping into the air, water and land. Under the federal community “right to know” law, the nation’s largest manufacturing plants were required to report their emissions beginning in 1987, with smaller firms to be phased in later.
The first compilation of figures, made public last month, reveals that industry dumped nearly 112.5 million tons of toxics into the environment nationwide, an amount three times greater than first thought. Although cautious to draw conclusions from the raw numbers, EPA officials said the figures are “startling and unacceptably high.”
In San Diego County, environmental activists were just as critical of the amounts and types of substances released.
“If you look at the numbers realistically, you can’t come to a conclusion that industry is being a responsible San Diego citizen,” said Ted Nordhaus, who directs a local toxic-use reduction campaign for CalPIRG, a statewide environmental watchdog group. “They are exposing the community to tremendous health hazards.
“Your fate ends up being determined on which way the wind is blowing, and that gets a little scary . . . “ Nordhaus said.
Substitutes Needed
Diane Takvorian, executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Health Coalition, agreed, adding that the numbers show that the current governmental philosophy of “managing” potentially hazardous substances isn’t working. The answer is to make industry find environmentally safe substitutes for toxic chemicals, she said.
“The reality is that we don’t use them very safely,” Takvorian said. “In fact, the rate of air pollution is not decreasing, it’s increasing.”
But Bill Anderson, executive vice president of the Industrial Environmental Assn. of San Diego, said many of the San Diego companies reporting their 1987 emissions are working to reduce the releases of toxic and environmentally damaging gases from their plants.
He also said there is no proof that the toxic air emissions pose a public health hazard.
“It is absolutely safe,” said Anderson, whose industrial trade group includes environmental officers from some of the companies reporting the greatest volume of toxic releases under the EPA program.
“I think (the figures) should be reviewed, carefully evaluated with all the rules and regulations that we have, because we live in this community along with everyone else,” he said. “And we are just as anxious to make sure that we live in a community that is free of adverse pollutants.”
2.2 Pounds Per Person
In all, EPA statistics show that 51 San Diego County companies, many of them near populated areas, reported at least 2,519 tons of toxic air pollution during 1987. The total amounted to about 2.2 pounds of airborne toxics for every man, woman and child in the county.
Statistics also show that:
* More than half the toxic releases, or 1,367 tons, were made up of three suspected carcinogens: methylene chloride, tetrachloroethylene and propylene oxide. Preliminary scientific screening indicates that the last two substances are suspected of causing, in addition to cancer, infertility and either genetic or birth defects.
Two other compounds used as solvents in the high-tech industry made up another 26% of the county’s toxic air releases. Freon 113 and 1,1,1-trichloroethane are both known to deplete the Earth’s ozone layer; the latter is suspected of causing infertility and birth defects.
* Only 1,444 tons, or about 57%, of the air pollution came from industry smokestacks, traditionally the site where companies connect pollution-control devices.
The rest of the 1987 emissions, about 1,075 tons, or 43%, were classified as “fugitive,” meaning they were released straight into the atmosphere through ventilation systems or evaporation.
“Basically, these are unanticipated and are uncontrolled and they don’t know where they are going,” Takvorian said of the fugitive releases.
* Signet Armorlite, a San Marcos optical lens manufacturer, was the company with the highest toxic emissions during 1987. The company, in an industrial park a few blocks south of Palomar College, dumped nearly 450 tons of toxics into the air, the EPA figures show.
The bulk of the company’s emissions consisted of the suspected carcinogen methylene chloride, which is used to clean the lenses for inspection. Company President Richard Ormsby said this week that his company’s use of the chemical, which is unregulated by local air pollution officials, is increasing.
Caspian, a Kearny Mesa firm that chemically “mills” airplane parts, reported the second-highest amount of emissions, with 417 tons. Most of that was carcinogenic tetrachloroethylene, which the company uses in a process to reduce the weight of the parts.
“It’s bad news, we admit to it,” Caspian President Cyrus Jaffari said in an interview this week.
Jaffari said the problem with emissions bothered him so much that he committed 85% of the firm’s net worth in a quest over the past two years to finding a substitute for solvent-based chemicals such as tetrachloroethylene, which is also used in the dry-cleaning business.
The gamble has paid off, said Jaffari, and Caspian has found a way to use environmentally safe, water-based compounds to take the place of the toxic chemicals. The result: The company is expected to reduce its toxic emissions to only 1 1/2 tons, he said.
“We want to stay in this business, and we are dedicated to the proposition that it can be done without damaging the environment,” Jaffari said.
Installing New Scrubbers
Likewise, officials of Kelco, in Logan Heights at the foot of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, are spending $2.5 million to install new scrubbers this summer to remove 90% of their emissions. EPA figures show that the kelp-processing plant was the No. 3 company for dumping toxics into the air, with a total of 344 tons.
Most of that was propylene oxide, a substance Kelco uses to make food emulsifiers, said Don E. Conner, the company’s manager of community and government affairs. The substance was also recently added to the state’s list of suspected carcinogens.
Conner said propylene oxide has been used by Kelco for 20 years and that the amount of the substance is “diluted” when it comes out of the company’s smokestack.
“In our experience with this, we are not aware of any type of chronic health problem with our workers or anybody else,” Conner said. But he added that the new scrubbers should virtually eliminate any worry.
On a smaller scale, in scenic Rancho Bernardo, a company spokesman for Unisys said his company’s 1987 release of 3.6 tons of 1,1,1-trichloroethane translates into an amount well below the federal health standard of 350 parts per million for worker exposure.
“By the time that is disbursed in the airstream and it goes a mile, you are going to be less than any 350 parts per million,” said Gary Garrison, Unisys’ manager for safety and the environment. “If you were standing up on our roof with your nose in our exhaust, you might get enough there to make you sick to your stomach.”
No Plans to Stop
At Signet Armorlite, the county’s biggest toxic emitter, Ormsby said his company will continue its heavy use of suspected carcinogenic methylene chloride unless the EPA and the county’s Air Pollution Control District express concern over health hazards.
“We expect the Air Pollution Control District to provide us that input if there is that type of concern,” Ormsby said. “In the case of methylene chloride . . . we have never heard that concern expressed.
“We report our usage to the APCD and the EPA yearly,” he said. “We never have been cited for using this material, and it is a non-regulated solvent. Until this time, we have had no contact by any agency relative to its usage and vapor release.”
Dick Smith, the APCD’s deputy director, said the agency has no reason to ask the company to reduce its emissions of the suspected carcinogen, although the state is developing regulations for the substance.
“We have no real reason to believe they are creating a local health problem,” Smith said, adding that the agency has not received complaints from the company’s workers or of health problems in areas near Signet’s San Marcos plant.
But Takvorian, of the Environmental Health Coalition, said it would be foolish for the district to wait for health complaints before forcing Signet to curtail its emissions of the suspected carcinogen.
Onus on Companies
“Down the street, at Palomar (College), there’s hundreds of thousands of young people who have been exposed to some concentration of this material,” Takvorian said. “We probably won’t know what the effects will have been. They are experimental guinea pigs . . . . “
Although Takvorian applauded companies like Caspian for voluntarily reducing the amount of toxic emissions by finding environmentally safe substitutes, she also said the recent EPA figures should put the onus on local companies to “prove that these chemicals are safe” for workers and those living near the plants.
“We don’t want to wait around for the health studies to prove that these people will get cancer or did get cancer. We want to protect them before they get cancer.
“We want to reverse the system,” Takvorian said. “People are innocent until proven guilty. Chemicals are guilty until proven innocent.”
LARGEST VOLUMNE OF 1987 TOXIC AIR EMISSIONS BY CHEMICAL
Chemical Amount in Tons Tetrachloroethylene 555.7 1,1,1-trichloroethane 477.3 Methylene chloride 429.7 Propylene oxide 342.3 Freon 113 198.2 Acetone 65.1 Methyl ethyl ketone 64.5 Xylene 57.5 2-etnoxyethanol 44.5 Toluene 44.0
SOURCE: California Environmental Affairs Agency.
COMPANIES WITH LARGEST VOLUMNE OF TOXIC AIR EMISSIONS IN 1987
Amount Company Location in Tons Signet Armorlite San Marcos 450 Caspian Inc. Kearny Mesa 417 Kelco Logan Heights 345 Rohr Industries Chula Vista 254 General Dynamics downtown, Kearny Mesa 188 Solar Turbines Kearny Mesa 148 Chemtronics, Inc. El Cajon 144 Pro-Line Paint Logan Heights 88 Nassco Logan Heights 79 Watkings Manufacturing San Marcos, Carlsbad 69
SOURCE: California Environmental Affairs Agency.
