On the Toxic Trail : Contamination: County specialists search for hazardous waste materials on riot-torn sites.

Wearing green-and-white protective suits and breathing with the aid of oxygen tanks, Richard Gillaspy and Tim Naprawa, poked at the charred remains of Villa Dry Cleaners in Compton on Monday, searching for cancer-causing chemicals and asbestos amid the rubble.

Gillaspy and Naprawa, county hazardous waste specialists, found and removed three half-melted bottles containing a caustic liquid and later declared the site clean, moving a step closer to clearing the toxic trail left by the Los Angeles riots.

The last of the 21 contaminated sites in Compton was given a clean bill of health Monday, and Gillaspy turned his attention to Los Angeles where there was still plenty of work to be done.

“Fifty flatbed trucks of material will ultimately leave Los Angeles (County) as hazardous waste,” Gillaspy said.

Last week, Gillaspy’s crew removed five 55-gallon drums containing perchloroethylene (PCE), a dry-cleaning solvent suspected of causing cancer. They also mopped up a small pool of the chemical and removed an asbestos-covered pipe.

The riot-sparked fires that raced through Los Angeles and surrounding areas left behind a witches’ brew of toxic substances, from paints and thinners on the shelves of hardware stores to batteries with caustic acid in auto repair shops.

Los Angeles County inspectors examined more than 1,000 buildings that were torched during the riots, said Walter Uroff, a county hazardous materials specialist who is helping to coordinate the cleanup.

They found about 100 sites in Los Angeles and about 40 sites in Compton, Inglewood and unincorporated Los Angeles County that contained hazardous substances, Uroff said. Sixty-eight of those have asbestos.

Asbestos, a fibrous mineral, was once used widely as building insulation and for fire protection. Many researchers believe that inhaling asbestos fibers increases the risk of cancer.

County specialists such as Gillaspy are supervising private contractors, who are performing the cleanup, which began May 20 and is expected to be finished in about a month. In all, more than 50 people are scouring the fire-ravaged buildings. To date, 40 sites have been cleaned.

The projected cost of the hazardous waste cleanup is $4 million, said Jose Ochoa, chief of emergency operations for the county’s hazardous waste control program. The county expects to recover most of that from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, which has pledged assistance rebuilding the riot-torn areas of the county.

Some of the cleanup jobs are tiny, such as the Compton car stereo installation shop that had stored about 30 cans of spray paint. One of the largest jobs involves a Sherman Williams store and warehouse in Los Angeles, which housed dozens of five-gallon drums of paint and solvents, Gillaspy said. The paint company has hired a private firm to do the work, which is in progress, Uroff said.

Health officials say they are most concerned about public exposure to the polluted sites. Scavengers seeking metal drums and scrap metal frequently ignore warning signs and enter the contaminated areas.

When Gillaspy and his workers arrived Monday morning at Villa Dry Cleaners, a man was loading some metal pipe and fittings into an old blue pickup truck. The man, Jose Quintanilla of South Gate, said he recognized the potential danger but decided to go into the building anyway. He said he had collected scrap metal from three other charred buildings in recent weeks.

“I collect the metal for recycling,” Quintanilla said. “I need the money.”

Uroff said there had been no reports of injuries related to the sites. Health officials said they have not figured out how much hazardous waste they have collected so far. Some of the material has been recycled. Gillaspy’s crew donated about 400 gallons of relatively unscathed paint to a local community center to cover graffiti.

No one knows how much material, including lumber and other building materials saturated with chemicals, will be hauled to toxic waste dumps or to recycling firms. And no one knows how much toxic waste escaped into the environment in the days after the rioting.

Fumes escaped into the air while the flames were still burning. And as the blazes were fought, some of the pollutants from the burning structures flowed into storm drains--and eventually into the ocean.

“By the time we got here days had passed,” Gillaspy said. “Whatever went off (the site) was lost.”