Doctor Urges Limits on Nontoxic Dump Odors : Lopez Canyon: The county official contends that the air quality district should require Los Angeles to reduce emissions from the landfill because people can become temporarily ill.

Even if they aren’t toxic, odors that make people temporarily ill are sufficient reason for regional air quality officials to require the city of Los Angeles to reduce gas emissions from Lopez Canyon Landfill, a top county health official said Thursday.

“Our view is that it is no good for people to have nausea, headaches and other health problems that are caused by odor nuisances,” said Dr. Paul J. Papanek Jr., chief of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ toxics epidemiology and disease control programs.

He spoke before the five-member South Coast Air Quality Management District hearing board conducting an inquiry into alleged violations of state air pollution laws at the landfill near Lake View Terrace and Kagel Canyon in the northeastern San Fernando Valley.

In August, the same board ordered the city to bring gas emissions down to state limits by December. However, state and local officials said that as recently as April, emissions were measured at 10,000 parts per million of air, far above the 500 p.p.m. allowed by the state.

City Bureau of Sanitation officials have not disputed that, but said it was expected that they would need time to get a new gas collection system installed and working.

Deputy City Atty. Christopher Westoff, representing the sanitation bureau, told the board that installation of the system, which cost the city $4 billion, is complete.

He said landfill operators expect to be in full compliance with state law as soon as the system stabilizes, and when that occurs, residents will no longer smell the odors.

Papanek, who was asked to testify Thursday as an impartial witness, said his department routinely contacts the air quality district when residents complain to his office about odors.

“We don’t find that people make these things up,” he said. “When they complain, the odors are usually there.”

A state study shows that up to 40% of the people who live near landfills commonly have complaints such as nausea, headaches, respiratory ailments and even fainting spells, Papanek said. Odors are “very clearly associated” with such illnesses, he added.

Air quality officials should make sure that such incidents are “infrequent and slight,” Papanek said.

If such odors occur “even twice a week and can be documented, that is too often,” he said. “If odors cause lives to be disrupted, that is too much.”

Papanek discounted any theory that odor complaints from Lake View Terrace and Kagel Canyon residents are the result of mass hysteria, which he said is seldom geographically based.

“Odor complaints occur more often when people are upset,” Papanek said. “But I don’t think it’s mass hysteria.”

Papanek said his office looked into two reported incidents in which people became ill as a result of breathing gases emitted by the landfill--one Oct. 12 in which three children became sick while playing in their yards, the other in March, 1989, when a city worker was overcome by fumes and collapsed.

He said he agreed with Dr. Marjorie Laughlin, the doctor who treated the children, that they were sickened by “an odor episode.”

“It’s clear that something pretty smelly caused those children to vomit,” he said.

It also is reasonably likely that the worker became ill from landfill fumes, Papanek said. “A terrible odor can cause someone to faint. To me, it seems reasonable that the landfill did this.”

Under questioning by Westoff, Papanek said he had no evidence that the dump emits toxic gases in quantities sufficient to cause cancer. But he said it would be “prudent to do testing for carcinogens” in the surrounding community.

“We need to watch odor nuisances like a hawk” because of their potential risk, he said.

The Air Quality Management District has cited the landfill at least nine times in recent months for emitting gas “in such quantity as to cause a public nuisance off site,” said district Inspector Terry Wilkinson. So far, the city has not been fined for the violations, which carry penalties of up to $25,000 a day, district officials said.

The hearing will continue Wednesday and is expected to last through the month. Landfill opponents said Thursday that they will ask the Los Angeles Planning Commission to postpone a July 16 hearing on a permit that would allow the landfill to expand.