The Numbers Behind the Smog : Air quality: Annual reports show companies released 2.6 million pounds of pollutants last year. Still, authorities say industrial emissions are on a downward trend.

Woodworkers at an El Monte factory spray clear finishes onto smoothly sanded rectangles of maple to make them into kitchen cabinets with an elegant luster. As a result, 199,000 pounds of toxic chemicals last year evaporated into the skies of the central San Gabriel Valley.

At an Azusa plant where eyeglasses for children are made, an efficient yet highly toxic solvent is used to cleanse the lenses. In the process, tens of thousands of pounds of the chemical go into the air in a year’s time.

In Pomona, the ozone-depleting solvent Freon is pumped from railroad tank cars, regularly arriving from a Texas factory. During 1990, an estimated 10,800 pounds of the chemical leaked or evaporated from the cars and the tanks where the compound was stored until delivery to aerospace plants throughout Southern California.

All across the San Gabriel Valley, 145 manufacturing companies--whose products range from pickles to rivets, from catheters to airplane fuel tanks, ice cream to helicopter blades--last year reported discharging into the air an estimated 2.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals, according to annual reports companies filed with the federal government last summer.

Some of the toxic compounds cause smog. Some deplete the Earth’s protective ozone layer. Some are believed to cause cancer and reproductive harm in humans.

However, beyond those broad conclusions, industrial, scientific and environmental experts say it is impossible to pinpoint what immediate and precise health effects occur from the release--in the course of manufacturing processes--of those tons upon tons of chemicals in the region.

“The real story is told by exposure,” Robert Pease, planning manager for the air toxics division of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, said of health risks. The inventory does not measure exposure.

Complex factors contribute to air pollution risks, he said, including meteorology and the concentration and dilution of chemicals. Also, the San Gabriel Basin does not exist in isolation but is part of the larger Los Angeles Basin. Chemicals in the air migrate from place to place in Southern California.

Air experts say it is known, however, that manufacturing pollutants, along with other sources such as power plants, account for 20% of the region’s smog. Automobile and truck traffic is blamed for 50%.

The annual pollution inventory is by no means perfect, said Hacienda Heights environmentalist Wil Baca, who is a board member of the Coalition for Clean Air, but he said it had helped to keep companies more environmentally honest. “It does put them on notice,” he said, “that they’ve got to discipline themselves to reduce the use of toxics.”

The 1990 air emission figures--drawn by The Times from the annual reports filed last summer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency--do, in fact, reflect a continuing downward trend.

This year’s San Gabriel Valley total--not quite one-tenth of the amount reported for Los Angeles County--represents about a 15% decline from the previous year’s estimates.

The decrease reflects similar patterns throughout the nation, including the whole of Southern California, where the 1990 totals dropped 10%.

“Generally we’re seeing a downward trend, and we think that is a positive sign,” Pease said.

Government officials, scientists, environmental activists and industry representatives attribute the decline to a combination of factors.

These include the economic slowdown and companies’ fears of adverse pollution publicity combined with their desires to appear as environmental “good neighbors.”

In addition, the decline is attributed to the movement away from the use of toxic chemicals, owing partly to the federal Clean Air Act and to increasingly strict regulations of the local air district, which is extracting higher and higher permit fees for the manufacturing use of certain chemicals.

From large companies to small, San Gabriel Valley executives stressed they are doing what they can to cut down on toxic chemicals. Further, they said that within the next few years, and certainly within the coming decade, they will have found alternatives for many toxic compounds.

One of the most dramatic examples of a company cutting down on its use of toxic chemicals can be found at the Monrovia operations of the Pasadena-based, Fortune-500 label maker Avery Dennison Corp.

In 1987, the company reported a whopping 1.4 million pounds in toxic air emissions in Monrovia, where more than a billion gummed labels are produced annually.

The figure has plummeted each year since, while business has modestly grown, company officials say. Although the Avery Dennison plant was still one of the biggest San Gabriel Valley polluters in 1990, the total had dropped to 180,927 pounds.

Research for alternatives is extensive and expensive, said Alan Gotcher, senior vice president for manufacturing and technology.

In the label-making process, paper, film and foil materials are coated with petroleum-based adhesives. In 1989, the company installed a $1-million emission-control system that collects evaporating solvent and destroys much of it in an incinerator.

“We really put a big effort into capturing the hydrocarbons and we began to change our formulations in 1990 to non-solvent-based adhesives,” Gotcher said.

Because of the change to water-based adhesives, the company expects another large drop next year.

“Our intent is to make our plants in California solvent-free,” Gotcher said. “We’re still several years away. But it’s a pretty high priority. . . . We literally spend millions of dollars a year.”

The conversion away from solvent-based solutions is happening, on large and small scales, at dozens of manufacturing plants locally.

Officials at Macklenburg-Duncan Co., an industrial adhesives manufacturer in the City of Industry, reported last year the company released 21,000 pounds of solvents into the air. The total, however, will be zero for this year, officials said, owing to a conversion to a nontoxic process.

Conversion to non-petroleum solvents holds the key to survival for his home-grown El Monte firm, said William McConnell, president of McConnell Cabinets, which ranked third highest among San Gabriel Valley air-pollution emitters.

A boom in business in 1990, he said, necessitated more than doubling the release of toxic chemicals.

But he said the large amount--199,000 pounds--of toxic chemicals his firm emitted last year is not a fair reflection of how hard he has worked with the South Coast Air Quality Management District to reduce emissions while keeping his 300-employee factory thriving.

“It’s a fight and an argument all the way,” he said.

As a cure for his regulatory difficulties with toxic chemicals, he said, he expects to open a new building soon in the City of Industry. Operations there, he said, will be oriented toward water-based finishes.

McConnell said he is determined that the $4.4-million new facility be competitive with businesses that have fled to Mexico or elsewhere to avoid Southern California’s environmental rules.

If the new water-based process works, he said, that will mean the cabinet company will greatly reduce its use of toxic chemicals.

Like McConnell, Utility Trailer Manufacturing Co. in the City of Industry is converting with a hope that its new nontoxic, water-based, painting process will work. “We don’t know what the durability of the paint will be,” said Tom Esnault, industrial relations manager of the firm, which ranked fourth in San Gabriel Valley air emissions.

The change to nontoxic, he said, “was initially very costly.” But “we found it to be more efficient and in some respects it has reduced labor costs.”

Although Utility’s air emissions increased somewhat in 1990, they remained lower than the reported 1988 level of 270,892 pounds.

The decline, Esnault said, is because of poor economic conditions and because, as a cost-cutting measure, the company discontinued production in California of a refrigerated trailer requiring the use of certain toxic chemicals. These compounds, he said, necessitated paying expensive permit fees to the air district.

Because of the cutback, however, he said 90 employees--or one-fourth of the work force--were laid off.

Instead of cutting production lines in 1990, Azusa-based Optical Radiation Corp. was adding them. Business has been booming, 10% to 15% annually, and consequently, so has the use of toxic chemicals.

The lens manufacturer upped its air-pollution emissions by 10% to 231,992 pounds and found itself at the top of the region’s pollution list.

“We basically built a new product line that accounts for the increase,” said Richard Wood, one of Optical’s founders and chief executive officer.

The company started producing safety glasses for workers and unbreakable glasses for children. This required the use of Freon 113, a chemical blamed for depletion of the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Optical reported more than doubling its use of Freon 113, up from 37,623 pounds in 1989 to 87,490 pounds last year.

But this year, with modifications in its process, Optical is maintaining its growth while cutting the use of Freon 113 back to the 1989 level, Wood said.

“We’ve got the same problems as everybody else,” Wood said. “We’re all working hard to find substitute chemicals. . . . There are economic incentives to do that. And we all live in the San Gabriel Valley and would like it as clean as possible.”

Times staff writers Ajowa Ifateyo, Rose Kim and Myron Levin and Times researchers Dan Malcor and Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.

How to Obtain Toxic Release Data

Toxic release data for specific manufacturers--or all manufacturers within a ZIP code, a city or an entire county--can be obtained from the California Environmental Protection Agency in Sacramento.

Data-seekers can call the Cal EPA help desk at (916) 327-1848, or write: Cal EPA, Office of Environmental Information, 555 Capitol Mall, Room 525, Sacramento, Calif. 95814.

Floppy discs containing a full year of data for the entire state may also be purchased for $50 each. Discs are available for 1987, ‘88, ’89 and ’90.

Top Polluters in the San Gabriel Valley

Manufacturing firms are required to provide statistics on emissions of about 340 chemicals as part of a “community right to know” law passed by Congress in 1986. The numbers on the map correspond to the ranking of the companies according to the amount of toxic emissions generated.

Company: 1. Optical Radiation Corp.

Address: 1300 Optical Drive, Azusa

Main product: Lenses

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 231,992

% change ‘89-’90: +10

Main pollutants emitted: TCA, methylene chloride, Freon 113

Company: 2. Composite Structures/Alcoa

Address: 801 Royal Oaks Drive, Monrovia

Main product: Aerospace parts

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 201,977

% change ‘89-’90: +3

Main pollutants emitted: TCA

Company: 3. McConnell Cabinets Inc.

Address: 3017 N. Rumford Ave., El Monte

Main product: Wooden cabinets

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 199,000

% change ‘89-’90: +115

Main pollutants emitted: TCA, methyl ethyl ketone

Company: 4. Utility Trailer Manufacturing Co.

Address: 17300 E. Chestnut St., City of Industry

Main product: Truck trailers

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 189,666

% change ‘89-’90: +18

Main pollutants emitted: TCA

Company: 5. Avery Dennison Corp.

Address: 1616 S. California Ave., Monrovia

Main product: Labels

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 180,927

% change ‘89-’90: -33

Main pollutants emitted: Toluene, acetone

Company: 6. General Dynamics, Air Defense Systems

Address: 1675 W. Mission Blvd., Pomona

Main product: Aerospace defense weapons and missiles

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 126,147

% change ‘89-’90: -58

Main pollutants emitted: Freon 113

Company: 7. Aztec Washer Co. Inc

Address: 20520 Walnut Drive, Walnut

Main product: Metal washers

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 98,259

% change ‘89-’90: +34

Main pollutants emitted: TCA

Company: 8. R&G; Enameling

Address: 1350 Vineland Ave., Baldwin Park

Main product: Office furniture painting

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 92,190

% change ‘89-’90: +61

Main pollutants emitted: TCA

Company: 9. TRW Technar Inc.

Address: 5462 N. Irwindale Ave., Irwindale

Main product: Sensors for crash air bags

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 79,376

% change ‘89-’90: -38

Main pollutants emitted: Freon 113

Company: 10. Crown City Plating Co.

Address: 4350 Temple City Blvd., Temple City

Main product: Plating of bathroom hardware

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 73,825

% change ‘89-’90: -75

Main pollutants emitted: TCA

Company: 11. Screwcorp

Address: 13001 E. Temple Ave., City of Industry

Main product: Nuts and bolts for aerospace

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 70,064

% change ‘89-’90: -19

Main pollutants emitted: TCA

Company: 12. M.C. Gill Corp.

Address: 4056 Easy St., El Monte

Main product: Aircraft cargo compartment paneling

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 64,700

% change ‘89-’90: -17

Main pollutants emitted: Acetone

Company: 13. Dexter Electronic Materials Division

Address: 15051 E. Don Julian Road, City of Industry

Main product: Coatings, adhesives for circuitry

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 58,000

% change ‘89-’90: +41

Main pollutants emitted: Methylene chloride

Company: 14. Lansco Die Casting Inc.

Address: 711 S. Stimson Ave., City of Industry

Main product: Metal parts

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 57,250

% change ‘89-’90: +24

Main pollutants emitted: Tetrachloroethylene

Company: 15. Baxter Healthcare Corp., Phramseal Division *

Address: 4401 Foxdale Ave., Irwindale

Main product: Medical supplies disposal

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 55,005

% change ‘89-’90: +65

Main pollutants emitted: Methyl ethyl ketone

Company: 16. 3M

Address: 1601 S. Shamrock Ave., Monrovia

Main product: Coated fabrics and bottle liners

Estimated emissions in 1990 (in pounds): 56,613

% change ‘89-’90: -16

Main pollutants emitted: Toluene

* Scheduled to close in 1991.

Source: California Environmental Protection Agency