Cleaning Up the Charbroiled Air in Southern California

It has come to this in Southern California: a choice between eating or breathing.

OK, it’s a bit more complicated than that. But would you give up delicious, healthy, California-style charbroiled food to help clean up our dirty air? Don’t all speak at once.

That appetite-building aroma from the exhaust fan of a charbroiler at the neighborhood restaurant or burger joint contains the same air-polluting junk as the black smoke from a diesel bus.

For two years, the pollution police at the South Coast Air Quality Management District have been busting broilers that belch too much. There’s talk of requiring all restaurant charbroilers in the Los Angeles basin to have expensive anti-smog equipment--akin to catalytic converters on automobiles--sometime after 1991.

Some may dismiss this as a tempest in a barbecue pit and offer it as proof that California really is drifting away from the rest of the world. But that’s superficial.

What the controversy over smog and charbroilers really illustrates is how lifestyle and economy inescapably intersect in Southern California. It also shows how an industry that sprang up to give us what we wanted also gave us what we didn’t want.

It all started with the back-yard barbecue. For at least two generations, Californians have cherished such cookouts as an important part of local culture, a reflection of the climate and the easy way of life. Meat, fish and chicken with a smokey flavor and carefully charred appearance have become identified as part of the region’s cuisine.

More than a decade ago, restaurants began experimenting with ways to bring the back-yard barbecue indoors to lure customers looking for the light, healthier taste they associated with California. That led to the popularity of charbroilers, simple devices with an open flame, usually gas-fired, below a grill.

Among the first to popularize charbroilers in fancy restaurants was Michael McCarty, who opened Michael’s restaurant in Santa Monica in 1979. “Most restaurants were smaller and slower then,” he said. “They were mostly roasting and sauteing. I wanted to grill everything.”

In the trend-setting tradition of Southern California, he created a restaurant that could serve more people faster--since charbroiling takes much less time than roasting. And he adapted the back-yard barbecue to the world of haute cuisine.

Today, there are more than 25,000 eating establishments in the South Coast Air Quality Management District (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and part of San Bernardino counties), and it’s estimated that as many as 7,000 have charbroilers. They range from the Carl’s Jr. and Burger King chains to tony restaurants such as McCarty’s to mom-and-pop grills in mini-malls.

The number of charbroilers increased dramatically in the 1980s, as hundreds of new fast-food places were opened--many by immigrant entrepreneurs. Add to that the increasing number of restaurants that call themselves barbecues, but are really charbroilers because they use open flame and smoke to cook.

When meat is placed on a charbroiler grill, grease and tiny bits of the food drop into the flame, are incinerated and go up the exhaust pipe into the atmosphere. The smoke and particles combine with the dust, smoke, car exhaust and ash from all the other pollution sources to make smog. (Old-fashioned flame-above broilers, such as those in most home ranges, aren’t considered part of the smog problem because the grease and food particles are not burned by the flame.)

The huge increase in the amount of charbroiling at restaurants did not escape the watchful eye and nose of the AQMD, which is charged with improving air quality in the basin. In 1988, the district began requiring permits to operate charbroilers. (No other air pollution agency in the country has adopted specific rules for charbroilers.)

In the process of inspecting to approve permits, the AQMD discovered that there were a lot more charbroilers than it thought. What’s more, it found a large number to be in violation of air-quality standards. Since June, 1988, 1,341 notices have been sent out warning restaurant owners to clean up their charbroilers. Another 69 have actually been cited for excessive smoking, and they have been fined $19,800 so far.

The AQMD estimates that charbroilers belched 7.4 tons a day of particulate matter (the same stuff that makes diesel smoke black) into the basin’s air in 1985, the latest year for which numbers are available. By comparison, the 8 million vehicles in the region spewed out 84 tons a day in the same year, so charbroilers aren’t exactly the major culprit in smog production.

But since slapping controls on cars hasn’t done enough to reduce air pollution, the smog fighters have shifted to lesser-known sources, such as restaurants.

For its part, the restaurant industry has announced its cautious support for the AQMD’s actions. “Everybody’s got to do their part,” a California Restaurant Assn. spokesman says.

But the industry is clearly worried that the public will become angry if cleaner air means that charbroiled food will be harder to buy. “It’s a flavor that much of the public loves and wants,” says Gerald Breitbart, a veteran Southland restaurateur who is a consultant to the restaurant association. “It’s a part of our lifestyle.”

In the fiercely competitive Southern California restaurant industry, some are concerned that if they stop offering charbroiled food or alter their cooking methods to meet air-quality rules, they’ll be left behind by competitors.

Woody Phillips, who operates two barbecue restaurants in South Central Los Angeles, has even contemplated selling his business after discovering that it will cost more than $20,000 to install high-tech electrostatic precipitators in his chimneys to “scrub” grease and ash from the cooking smoke.

“It’s about the final straw,” he says. “I thought that with the little bit of emissions we had, we weren’t in trouble.”

Maybe if Woody Phillips were the only one, that might be true. But he’s one of the thousands who have come along to meet the demand for charbroiled and barbecued food.

In Southern California, success has usually led to excess.

PARTICULATE POLLUTION

Major sources of particulate pollution in the South Coast air basin (1985 estimates). Particulate is an element of smog composed of tiny bits of soot, dust and debris.

Source Tons Per Day Road dust 1,284.81 Construction and demolition 194.97 Exhaust from all vehicles 84.19 Fires 17.45 Non-vehicle (trains, ships) 12.58 Fuel burning at factories, homes 10.88 Processing of chemicals 7.86 Farming 7.86 Charbroiling 7.40 Petroleum refining and marketing 4.07

Source: Air Quality Management District