Alert Level Set for Air Emissions : Pollution: Protesters say the threshold for reporting increased cancer risk to the public is too low.

Buffeted by competing demands from community activists and business interests, air quality officials on Friday steered a middle course in deciding when businesses must alert the public to significant health risks from toxic air contaminants.

The unanimous vote by the South Coast Air Quality Management District board culminated a daylong and sometimes tumultuous public hearing aimed at bringing the nation’s largest smog district into compliance with the state’s so-called “toxic hot spots” law enacted in 1987.

Under the new rule, a “significant” risk requiring notification will be declared whenever a firm’s emissions increase the public’s risk of cancer by 10 people in a million over a 70-year lifetime. A similar notification trigger was approved for non-cancerous air toxics.

Community activists led by the Labor/Community Watchdog, a coalition of neighborhood, environmental and labor groups--argued that the public should be informed each time the risk is greater than one person in a million.

The activists said notification at lower levels is important because the warning process fails to take into account the cumulative health impact of emissions from several firms in the same region. They also said combined emissions may not only add to the health threat, but multiply it--something known as a synergistic effect.

The board’s decision drew howls of protest from the activists.

“It’s a sell-out,” charged Eric Mann, director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center. He warned that if the AQMD would not notify the public of the health risks, his organization would.

“We’ll be doing more organized protests against the companies. What these companies must understand is they are not protected from us,” Mann said.

The California Manufacturers Assn. had argued for no public alert until the risk is 100 additional cancers in a population of a million.

Business representatives stressed that cancer risks must be put in perspective. Los Angeles attorney Robert Wyman, speaking for major oil and aerospace companies, noted that the vast majority of cancers are caused by a person’s diet and tobacco use. Pollution accounts for 2% of all cancer cases, he said.

“We cannot eliminate risk in society,” Wyman said.

In addition to bringing the district into compliance with state law, the vote also marked another milestone in efforts by Congress and the Legislature to regulate air pollutants that may not necessarily cause urban smog, but still may pose a threat to human health.

Laws requiring companies to publicly list pollutants have been on the books for several years. As a result, businesses have voluntarily cut emissions rather than face the adverse publicity of being known as polluters. The new law requires health assessments of these pollutants.

The district has been gearing up to implement the law since 1987. More than 300 companies in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties already have submitted the required health risk assessments.

About 60 of those firms will be required to notify the public of significant health risks because the assessments indicated they pose the greatest risk. The first written notices to nearby residents are expected to go out early next year.

Before the hearing, an estimated 75 placard-carrying protesters organized by Labor/Community Watchdog marched through the AQMD board room, shouting their opposition to the 10-in-a-million threshold.

Robert Ginsburg, a chemist and toxicologist from Chicago flown in by Labor/Community Watchdog, told the board, “We cannot tell people to stop breathing. But at least we can tell them what they’re breathing and what the risk is.”

Ginsburg said that in the last 20 years science has learned that lower exposure levels are more damaging than previously believed.

“Industry proposals turn both toxicology and public health (findings) on their head,” Ginsburg said.

On another issue that pitted environmentalists against business representatives, the AQMD board rejected appeals by former Gov. George Deukmejian and business interests to reconsider its refusal last month to create a new office of business ombudsman.

But in a compromise, the board voted unanimously to expand the role of the district’s public adviser, John Dunlap, who has served as the AQMD’s liaison with the public. Dunlap will now have increased authority to act as a trouble-shooter for business, environmentalists and others.