AQMD Expected to Issue Broad New Rule on Toxics : Environment: Air pollution regulation would cover 7,000 firms. Industry says cost of compliance is too high.
The Southland’s air pollution control agency is expected today to order factories to cut the toxic emissions they spew into the area’s smoggy skies, enacting a controversial and wide-ranging new regulation that would affect 7,000 businesses from the smallest dry cleaners to the largest oil refineries.
About 200 cancer cases a year are attributable to toxic pollutants in the air, the South Coast Air Quality Management District says. But the district estimates that the regulation up for a vote will avert fewer than four of those deaths at an annual cost to industry of about $16 million.
“It’s difficult to put a value on a life,” said James M. Lents, AQMD executive director. “This rule will cost $4.4 million per cancer case. Let the public be the judge.”
Businesses stridently disagree, saying that the costs of compliance are far higher than the district estimates and that the level of health risk the regulation deems acceptable is also unreasonable.
Environmentalists and community activists counter that the proposed regulation does not go far enough to protect the health of those who live in toxic hot spots--areas with a high concentration of oil refineries, aerospace manufacturers and other toxic polluters. They also contend that the regulation unfairly targets small businesses and allows the biggest polluters to escape effective regulation.
If the district’s governing board passes Rule 1402, existing facilities for the first time will have to review the impact of their emissions of 117 toxic pollutants on residents around them and take steps to reduce those emissions. Among the pollutants on the list are benzene, which is a product of combustion; chromium, which is used in metal plating, and perchloroethylene, which is used in dry cleaning.
“The public feels strongly about toxics,” Lents said. “The business community fears a rule. It (the proposed toxics regulation) is not the kind of rule we get a lot of plaudits for.”
The proposed regulation defines three levels of cancer risk posed by manufacturers and smaller businesses such as dry cleaners, furniture strippers and metal platers and gives separate timetables for risk reduction at each level:
* “Extreme” risk is defined as a cancer risk greater than 100 cases in 1 million for the people most exposed, those who live or work closest to a plant over a lifetime. These facilities will have three years to reduce risk below the extreme level, but may be eligible for extensions of up to two years.
* “Significant” risk is greater than 50 in 1 million. Facilities at this level will have five years to reduce their risk and may be eligible for extensions of five years.
* “Action” level of risk is greater than 10 in 1 million. These facilities will have five years to reduce risk and may be eligible for extensions of five years or more if technology to bring them into compliance is not yet available or is not economically feasible.
Although there is no specific list of companies at each level--because very few have completed costly risk assessments mandated by state law--the district estimates that about 160 facilities in its four-county jurisdiction cause cancer risks greater than 1,000 in 1 million--far above the extreme level outlined in the rule. An additional 3,000 facilities are estimated to cause a cancer risk of greater than 100 in 1 million.
In addition to cancer, hundreds of thousands of Southland residents are at increased risk of respiratory illness, reproductive problems and neurological disorders because of airborne toxic contaminants from the area’s factories, the district says.
The greatest “toxic hot spots” in the South Coast Air Basin are Burbank and surrounding cities, because of the large aerospace and auto supply industries there, and the Rancho Dominguez area in the South Bay, because of the proximity of refineries and freeways.
The new rule does nothing to lower the risk of toxic air pollution largely caused by benzene emissions from automobile traffic. Even people who do not live in Burbank or Rancho Dominguez face a high cancer risk--up to a 100 in 1 million chance of contracting cancer from air contaminants simply by living in the South Coast Air Basin.
“If you buy a house or work next door (to a toxic emitter) you are not in control of that risk,” said Bill Kelly, AQMD spokesman. “Our view is that those sources that can reduce, should reduce.”
The district also is scheduled to vote on amendments to a companion regulation, which for the past three years has required all new, expanded or modernized facilities to ensure that cancer risk to surrounding residents be less than 10 in 1 million. The amendments add 70 compounds to the existing list of 47 covered pollutants.
By affecting 7,000 small and large businesses, the new rules would be among the most wide-ranging enacted by the AQMD. Car-pooling regulations affect an estimated 8,000 businesses, while the proposed smog exchange to be voted on in September would affect 535.
Robert Wyman, an attorney representing a wide range of large local businesses, contends that the agency’s estimate of $16 million annual compliance cost is “way off.”
“We looked at one facility where the district said it would cost $25,000 to come into compliance,” Wyman said. “It’s actually $1.5 million. . . . (The proposed rules would) put an enormously more stringent regulation in place at a time when we can least afford it.”
In some instances, businesses would have to add emission control devices; in others, they could change the chemicals they use. Small businesses would be most affected, some say, because larger so-called “smokestack” industries such as refineries spew their emissions over a wider area, reducing the effect on an immediate neighborhood.
Katy Wolf, director of the Institute for Research and Technical Assistance in Santa Monica, contends that more than 97% of the firms that exceed the “action” or lowest level of risk are small businesses, compared to fewer than 3% of larger industries.
“That seems to me to be not fair,” said Wolf, whose nonprofit agency helps small businesses find technology to pollute less. The district “admits that 100% of the dry cleaners cannot meet the risk level, and 87% of furniture strippers. . . . I believe that we should work to reduce these risks. I just don’t think this is the way to do it.”
Carlos Molina, a Wilmington resident and community activist, contends that the proposed rules will not do enough to improve health in his neighborhood, which is heavily affected by nearby refineries. Molina plans today to join a group of about 30 members of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, a social justice group that focuses on environmental issues, at the AQMD hearing.
“The health effects I have felt is a very strong sore throat,” Molina said. “Sometimes I couldn’t breath during the night. I wake up to the smell and the harshness in my throat. I get pressure in the chest. It comes and goes. Around the neighborhood you find a lot of different types of health effects caused by pollution.”
The proposed rules are “not protective of public health,” said Jim Jenal, director of the clean air program at Citizens for a Better Environment. “This approach misses the whole point.”
