Cars Crossing Border Get Smog Warning

U.S. Customs officials at the San Ysidro border crossing are used to telling northbound drivers what they can and can’t bring into the United States, but there’s one thing they can’t keep out: choking exhaust fumes that bring tears to inspectors’ eyes.

For four hours Wednesday, however, inspectors got a little relief as California Highway Patrol officers cracked down on the worst smog-belching vehicles.

Six CHP officers and five Customs officers manned a joint inspection station, an experiment designed to deter visibly polluting vehicles from crossing the border. Of the 182 cars pulled over for emitting excessive exhaust, 112 were given citations, according to Lt. Ken Ahacic. Of those, about half were from Mexico, where vehicle-emission controls are less stringent than in the United States.

“Nobody likes to get stopped and get citations,” said Ahacic, who conceded that, for the Mexican drivers, the citations will be unenforceable “to some degree. But, if it’s done on an ongoing basis, it would be a deterrent.”

As yet, there are no plans for such a long-term program. And even Wednesday’s smog check was informal--tickets were issued to vehicles that appeared to be in violation, but no actual emissions tests were performed. Some unlucky drivers, stopped for emission violations, also received tickets for lack of insurance and mechanical problems, Ahacic said.

But Customs officials, who had requested CHP’s intervention in an attempt to improve working conditions for their inspectors, were hopeful that Wednesday’s pilot checks will make a difference.

For months, Customs inspectors have complained of headaches, coughing, sneezing and nausea they believe results from breathing fumes emitted by the hundreds of vehicles they inspect each day.

Their suspicions were recently confirmed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which found that Customs officials are exposed to an unhealthy amount of exhaust fumes each day, according to Bobbie Cassidy, a Customs spokeswoman.

Cassidy said the fumes “impair an inspector’s ability to think and function, and down the line that could result in serious health problems. . . . We’re trying to do something to alleviate that--to get people to fix their cars.”

Ahacic agreed that something needs to be done.

“It’s a big problem for the people who work there, as well as for Southern California as a whole,” he said, adding that CHP officers may be called upon to do similar inspections in the future. “There’s a good possibility that we’ll do this on an ongoing basis.”