Early Warning of Cancer Risk From Pollution Found Lagging : Health: An industrial emissions alert, the Toxic Hot Spots program, is one year behind. Funds and staff are short--but paperwork is not.

A state-mandated program to warn people of cancer risks from nearby industrial pollution has fallen a year behind schedule because of a shortage of staff and money and complicated paperwork, state and Ventura County officials said.

The Toxic Hot Spots program, which requires the largest polluters to calculate the health risks of their toxic emissions and notify nearby residents, is stuck in a morass of paperwork that neither county nor state officials are properly equipped to handle, officials said.

While state medical experts are still evaluating the first round of reports submitted by Ventura County companies for 1989, the second round of emissions reports are being filed by the same companies. Designated companies are required to file the reports every other year.

And, the paperwork is growing, as smaller polluters are being required to perform health risk assessments or submit data on their toxic emissions, said Karl Krause, engineering manager of the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District.

Given the various delays, Ventura County has yet to notify neighbors of significant cancer risks, seven years after the state Legislature passed the law that launched the program.

“It’s a mess,” Krause said. “It’s utter confusion. My sense is that the program has had so many delays, it’s almost out of control.”

But the complicated program has also produced some benefits. Some companies have voluntarily reduced their emissions after the program showed company managers how much pollution was being produced, said Terri Thomas, supervisor of the county’s program.

In addition, the Toxic Hot Spots program tells the public more than does a similar federal report that requires companies to inform only about the volume of emissions and not the associated risk of cancer, Thomas said.

“Nobody knew what kind of emissions were coming from a lot of this stuff before this program,” she said. “Just looking at how much emissions without knowing how toxic they are or how they are dispersed (into the air) doesn’t really tell you anything.”

The program will be even more valuable once residents who are subjected to harmful emissions are notified, said Janet Baas, senior environmental specialist at Southern California Edison.

“It’s important for people to find out . . . where the real hot spots are,” said Baas, whose company performed risk assessments for both of its Ventura County power plants. “From our perspective, it verified what we already felt was true from the beginning: that our company does not pose a health risk.”

The Toxic Hot Spots program, one of a flurry of Community-Right-to-Know laws created in the late 1980s, required that all companies that emit more than 25 tons of toxic pollutants to the air in 1989 submit reports to local air pollution authorities.

Companies posing potential risks because of toxic emissions or the proximity of residents were ordered to prepare reports assessing risks of cancer, birth defects and other serious health effects, to those who live nearby.

In calculating the risk, companies are required to assume that residents who live nearby are exposed to emissions for 24 hours a day for 70 years. Then, the prevailing wind and distance of residences are factored in to calculate health risks.

Ventura County officials consider a cancer risk to be “significant” when emissions are expected to cause at least 10 new cases of cancer in 1 million people.

Once submitted, the emissions data is reviewed by local air pollution control authorities. State medical experts then review the health data before it is returned to local officials for final approval and release.

Some Ventura County reports have been delayed by state medical reviewers. The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has received twice as many assessments than they were prepared to review, said Dr. George Alexeeff, chief of the state’s air toxicology and epidemiology section.

Since the program began, 600 assessments have been submitted to Alexeeff’s office for review. With only 10 staff members, Alexeeff said the state has had to contract with medical people outside to help review the reports.

His task has been complicated by complex reports filed by companies that are inadequately prepared, he said.

“Most of the risk assessments we have received have not been complete,” he said. “The companies have omitted information or calculations or skipped chemicals.” Those reports must be returned to the local districts, he said.

But he said Ventura County, although behind schedule to notify residents, has been diligent in insisting on thorough reports from polluters.

“On the whole, the quality of information we got from Ventura County has been excellent. So there is an advantage to taking a little bit longer to produce better quality reports.”

Edison’s two plants were among the 18 facilities that discharge 25 or more tons of toxic pollutants into the air. These companies are required to produce the detailed risk assessments in the first round of reporting that began in 1989. Since then, all the facilities have submitted the reports and five of them have received final approval. The others are still waiting for review from either the state or the county.

None of those approved were found to pose significant risks.

In addition to the two Edison plants, Conoco Inc. on the Rincon; 3M of Camarillo; Unocal in Bardsdale and Texaco fields at South Mountain and Ventura Avenue were approved as facilities that do not pose significant cancer risk to nearby residents.

The risk assessments now being approved, however, are based on 1989 emissions information. The companies are in the process of submitting updated data from 1991 and will soon be required to complete 1993 emissions inventories.

Meanwhile, eight companies in Ventura County, considered medium-sized polluters because they emit from 10 tons to 25 tons of toxic emissions each year, have also been ordered to perform health risk assessments.

“I’m a small business and can’t really afford this kind of nonsense,” said John Johnson, owner of Ventura Harbor Boatyard. Johnson was among the second set of businesses ordered to perform a health risk assessment.

Phil White, who worked at the Air Pollution Control District in its early years from 1970 to 1976, applauded the intention of the law.

“People need to know what they are being exposed to,” he said. “But I don’t think it helps to spend a lot of money and manpower on a bunch of paperwork that gives us questionable results in the end.”

Many other areas of the state have not been able to keep up with the load of paperwork, although the San Francisco Bay Area has managed to notify residents of risks and hold public meetings.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has not yet approved any of the 160 health risk assessments it ordered to be performed, said Bill Kelley, a district spokesman. The South Coast District, which includes Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, had intended to send out notices to residents last summer, he said.

“It’s been a more complicated process than we anticipated,” he said. But he said the district should be ready to approve reports and send out notices to the community in the next few months.

The assessment reviews and updated reports should be processed much more quickly in the future now that state, district and industry staff are trained in the program, he said.

After that, the district can focus on helping industry reduce its emissions.

“That’s the point when the program should begin to pay off,” he said.