Air Board Rejects Scaled-Back Anti-Toxics Plan : Environment: A majority favors an even less stringent approach to regulating industrial air pollution.

Polarized by an emotionally charged battle that has been waged since last summer, the Southland’s air quality board Friday rejected a proposal that would have protected more than one million residents from industrial air pollution linked to cancer and other deadly diseases.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District board will try again next month to reach a decision on how far to go in forcing industries in the Los Angeles Basin to protect communities from toxic fumes. Most board members are leaning toward a dramatically scaled-back plan that has drawn an outraged reaction from environmentalists and an endorsement from the area’s biggest industries.

The proposal is designed to protect people who live in toxic “hot spots” that are scattered throughout Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The primary areas include southeast Los Angeles, the Wilmington-Carson area and the Burbank area, which have large concentrations of industrial plants close to residential neighborhoods.

The board, which heard six hours of heated testimony from the public Friday and five hours last July, has now postponed action on the anti-toxics proposal on three occasions. The proposal rejected by the board Friday had been scaled back considerably from the one that was first recommended by the AQMD staff last July. Thousands of small businesses would have been exempted while 330 companies that pose the most health risk to residential neighborhoods would have been regulated had the board adopted Friday’s proposal.

Still, a majority of the board thought the plan remained too onerous and wanted it scaled down even further to eliminate about 100 additional companies and ease the cost to big businesses. Such a proposal would cut exposure to toxic fumes for only 70,000 people, instead of more than one million as originally proposed in July, and expose the communities to a risk of 100 cancer cases per million people instead of 10 per million.

The board members are torn between powerful businesses, led by a coalition of aerospace and oil firms that say the cancer risk from toxic emissions is inflated, and activists and environmentalists who accused the board of “toxic racism” and turning some urban communities into “sacrifice zones.”

Chris Mathis of a community-rights group in Los Angeles County accused the board of selling out to big business. He said if the board adopts a scaled-down version of the rule, future generations of mainly low-income and minority residents will be “virtually guaranteed” to experience more leukemia, lung cancer, liver damage, birth defects and other serious health problems.

“You are violating the civil rights of this whole community,” said Mathis, of Labor/Community Watchdog, an environmental group that focuses on the Wilmington-San Pedro area. Gail Feuer, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, appealed to the board to strengthen the proposal, not weaken it. “It’s the board’s role to protect public health. They can’t ignore their mission,” she said.

On the other hand, Stan Zwicker, representing the Small Business Coalition, said the proposal would have great cost to the economy “with no real significant health benefits.” He called the risk of cancer “overblown.”

Most AQMD board members said they rejected the proposal because of the $10-million-a-year price tag for business and because they also believe that the risk of cancer and disease in the Los Angeles Basin is not as great as toxicologists and risk assessment scientists say.

An estimated 200 cancer cases a year in the four-county Los Angeles region are believed to be caused by airborne toxic chemicals from all sources, including industry, cars, pesticides and consumer products, according to the state Air Resources Board. The Los Angeles Basin’s air has the highest concentrations of toxic chemicals in California, and some of the worst in the nation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says.

Under the various versions of proposals, a variety of industries would have to find ways to cut their toxic emissions, such as switching to less dangerous chemicals or adding filters to their plants.

In the original version in July, the AQMD envisioned that 7,000 businesses would have to cut back the volume of potentially cancer-causing chemicals they routinely release into the air. But under the latest version rejected by the board, 330 companies--those considered the worst offenders--would have had to comply. Several thousand dry cleaners, service stations, furniture refinishers and metal-plating shops would have been exempted.

But business leaders mounted an intense campaign to scale back the rule even further. The strongest push came from Robert Wyman, an attorney representing the Los Angeles-area oil industry and Northrop, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas and Hughes Aircraft, who suggested an alternate proposal that apparently stands a good chance of being approved by the board next month.

Under the version of the rule rejected by the board, a company would have to reduce its toxic emissions within five years if a risk assessment shows that more than 10 of every million people exposed to the fumes for a 70-year lifetime would contract cancer.

Of those companies, the ones that pose a “significant risk”--more than 100 cancer cases per one million people exposed--would be granted no extensions of that five-year period. Those with a lower risk, between 10 and 100 cancer cases per one million people, could be eligible for four-year extensions if it would cost more than $6 million to eliminate each individual case of cancer.

That proposal was shot down on a 4-4 vote that came late Friday afternoon, after several board members had left.

Business groups, led by the oil and aerospace companies, urged the board to regulate only those companies that fall into the greater risk category. That also failed on a 4-4 vote, but some board members who had already left the meeting said they would probably vote for such a proposal next month.

The cancer estimates are an inexact science. Actual cancer cases are not counted since the calculations only reflect the odds of people getting cancer from a lifetime exposure to toxic fumes.

Several board members said they voted against the rule because they have serious qualms about the reliability of such risk assessments, even though they are accepted by scientists worldwide.

Twelve other states have anti-toxics rules. Many, including those in New York and New Jersey, are more stringent than the proposal rejected Friday by the Los Angeles region board.