West Coast Cities, Chevron Cited for ‘Dirty’ Gasoline

West Coast cities have the “dirtiest” gasoline in the country and Chevron nationwide sells the gasoline with the highest average levels of cancer-causing benzene, an environmental group said today.

The group, Citizen Action, released a study saying Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco consistently were among the cities where unleaded gasoline had the greatest average concentrations of benzene as well as highly toxic chemicals called aromatic hydrocarbons, such as toluene and xylene.

Boston and Atlanta were also rated poorly in the study, which was based on a survey of gasoline in 18 cities conducted by the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Assn. in the summer of 1989.

Among the 12 oil companies covered by the study, Chevron was singled out for selling gasoline with the highest average benzene content nationwide.

Citizen Action officials said they hoped that their study will be used by consumers to avoid the most contaminated brands and fuel blends, both for environmental and health reasons.

Neither the oil industry nor Chevron officials had any immediate comment on the study.

The study comes as Congress is acting on clean air legislation that would set limits on benzene levels in the new cleaner-burning “reformulated” gasolines now being developed by several oil companies.

Benzene is emitted in auto exhaust, but the main threat to motorists comes in the form of gasoline vapors released during refueling. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that motorists face an eight in 100,000 chance of getting cancer from lifetime exposure to benzene emissions at the pump.

Aromatic hydrocarbons cause a wide variety of toxic effects, ranging from liver and kidney damage to birth defects, and also promote urban smog. Clean air legislation would regulate levels of those chemicals in gasoline as well.

Citizen Action officials said they believed that West Coast cities fared the worst because refineries in that region cannot find other markets for benzene and aromatic hydrocarbons and, thus, simply dumped them into their fuel blends.

In contrast, they said, Gulf Coast refiners can sell benzene and aromatic hydrocarbons to local chemical plants that need those substances to manufacture petrochemical products.