COVER STORY : No Breathing Room : AQMD’s Bid to Notify Residents of Toxic Hot Spots Is Mired in Bureaucracy

Some residents living in the shadow of Douglas Aircraft Co. on the Long Beach-Lakewood border say they have trouble breathing.

Vernie Boren, 53, a sales manager, has been stricken by pneumonia three times in the last 18 months. His wife Jo Anne, 47, frequently coughs and complains of a constant runny nose. Neighbor Pamela Lewin, 51, said she has been afflicted by a chronic cough and shortness of breath for 10 years. Down the street, a retired schoolteacher who has lived in her white split-level home for 38 years has been battling lung cancer.

Lately, some residents have been wondering whether the Douglas plant is contributing to their ailments.

A 1991 company report submitted to regional air quality officials found that the air pollution caused by the company’s emissions posed one of the biggest health risks among plants in the Long Beach/Southeast area.

But residents of the Lakewood neighborhood said they only learned of the report’s findings when a reporter came to call. Many expressed concern that they had not been told about the report, filed with the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“It’s very distressing,” said Jo Anne Boren. “Doesn’t AQMD represent us? Aren’t we their concern? You’d think this would have been taken care of in three years.”

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Under AQMD rules, neighborhoods such as this one are supposed to be notified about air polluters in their midst. But both businesses and environmentalists complain that the new rules set up an unwieldy procedure so mired in bureaucracy that they doubt the program will ever get in gear.

In 1989, the five-county AQMD began an ambitious program to target toxic hot spots throughout Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Companies had to report the amount of toxins they release into the air and calculate the likelihood that those pollutants would cause health problems, ranging from cancer to lead poisoning, among their neighbors.

After the agency performs a series of reviews on each report, the program’s regulations require a business to inform neighbors if its emissions could cause more than 10 cancer cases per million people.

If emissions increase the cancer rate by 100 cases per million, the company is required to take steps to reduce the toxic chemicals that it releases.

AQMD officials say they have been working as fast as they can, but the exhaustive study has been under way for five years, and officials say it may be years more before it is completed.

Preliminary documents on file at the AQMD show that of 50 Southeast-area companies required to submit reports to the agency, 13 might have to notify neighbors. Five, including Douglas Aircraft, showed levels high enough to require emission reductions. Douglas Aircraft reported an estimated cancer risk rate of 620 cases per million in 1991.

Douglas spokesman Robert Tomko said the estimated risks are much lower now because company officials have taken steps to clean up the emissions. Tomko said the company has upgraded equipment used in painting aircraft and aircraft parts. The plant has installed much stronger filters to catch emissions, and it has reduced methylene chloride, a carcinogen, in the paint, he said.

The companies targeted by the program do everything from manufacturing the B-2 bomber to refining oil to spray-painting chairs. They’re found in lower-income areas such as Lynwood, or in industrial areas in Long Beach and Santa Fe Springs, for example.

But one Downey company is across the street from a hospital emergency room, and hospital administrators said they were unaware of the possible health hazard.

“If there’s a risk, we should have been notified,” said Merideth Travis, director of corporate communications for Downey Community Hospital, a 214-bed facility across the street from American United Global Inc. National O-Ring Division. As stacks of reports awaiting approval pile up at the AQMD, both businesses and environmentalists are holding their breath.

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The AQMD’s Toxics Hot Spots program was intended as “the first sweeping approach to air toxics,” said Ben Shaw, the program’s senior enforcement manager. “This was the first one where we said, ‘Let’s look at everything.’ ”

So they looked at everything. About 2,700 facilities in the district’s five-county area filed reports on their emissions. Of those, 324 facilities that appeared to be polluting the most were required to perform a more detailed study called a health-risk assessment.

In the assessment, a company estimates how much toxic chemical it emits, using mathematical models of its manufacturing processes and air-flow patterns. Then it combines that with toxicology studies of people and animals to put a number value on the risk to humans.

One part of the report calculates how many extra cancer cases per million people the plant’s pollution is likely to cause. Another index measures other health risks, such as lung problems, nerve damage or kidney disease.

The numbers in the reports are largely educated guesses rather than facts. It’s almost impossible to measure the hazards of long-term exposure to low levels of a chemical, so environmental consultants fill in gaps in data with best-guess assumptions.

As a result, neither industry representatives nor environmentalists are happy. Industry decries the Toxics Hot Spots program as a burdensome bureaucracy that exaggerates health risks and drives businesses from the state. Air-quality activists say the program ignores some hazards and creates “human sacrifice zones” in the interest of economic gain.

“It’s really a jobs-or-an-environment type of issue,” said Randle Solganik, a board member of the Metal-Finishing Assn. of Southern California, a trade association of the metals industry, which relies on some highly toxic compounds in its manufacturing processes. “It really comes down to that. The question really is, how protective do you want to be.”

Businesses point out that although the program measures the risk per million people, the number of residents exposed to the emissions is generally much less than that--maybe a few hundred at most. So the actual number of extra cancer cases that would occur is usually less than one.

In addition, the model calculates the amount of chemicals a resident would be exposed to over the course of a lifetime, literally 24 hours a day, for 70 years. Few, if any, people would remain in one place for that long, industry experts assert, and therefore the regulations overestimate the level of exposure, and thus the risk, to neighbors.

Furthermore, they say, the hazards from industrial chemicals pale in comparison to other carcinogens, such as cigarette smoke or smog.

Fred Cooper, a Bay Area environmental consultant to industry, calculated the health risks of air measured at various sites throughout California. He concluded that the average cancer risk was 600 in a million--six times the level permitted for industrial emissions. And the biggest contributors to that risk were auto emissions.

Urivar Tombach, vice president of a consulting firm that performed the health-risk assessment for Golden West Refining Co. of Santa Fe Springs, said matching a cancer case with a particular chemical is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

“There are so many things that contribute to cancer--whether you smoke, the type of hair spray you use or what you eat. And finally there are genetic aspects,” he said.

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Environmentalists see those arguments as evasions. Air-quality activists lobbied the AQMD board to require facilities with risks higher than one cancer case per million to reduce emissions. AQMD staff recommended setting the standard at 10 in a million, the same level at which companies are required to notify neighbors. The board finally adopted the 100-in-a-million standard proposed by industry.

Environmentalists say that leaves neighbors in limbo because many companies will have to tell neighbors about the risk but won’t have to do anything to reduce it.

“The rule the board adopted is woefully weak and will provide scant protection for members of the community,” said Denny Zane of the Coalition for Clean Air. “It gave a false expectation of protection when no protection was being offered.”

Dr. Melanie Marty of the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which reviews the health risk assessments for AQMD, said the method of calculating the risks is designed to balance uncertainties on both sides of the equation.

But there are a number of glitches the method cannot account for, Marty said.

Risk assessments don’t measure the mixed effects of different chemicals--toxic substances may cancel each other out or multiply each other’s effects, but the reports don’t include those reactions, Marty said. Nor do they count the combined hazards of different facilities in the same area.

That’s a real concern in parts of the Southeast area. Of the 13 Southeast-area companies that might have to notify neighbors based on their preliminary reports, for example, three are in Santa Fe Springs and two are in Montebello.

The risk assessments also ignore chemicals that are transformed into carcinogens, or more potent carcinogens, after they are released, Marty said.

And although 729 chemicals must be listed in emissions reports, there is only data on the health effects of about 200 of them.

Furthermore, danger is measured in terms of healthy adults. But toxics may be more dangerous to children, the elderly or those with a genetic predisposition to cancer or other diseases.

“I don’t think the health risk assessments are overly (cautious),” Marty said. “They are designed to be health protective, but they are not overly (cautious) like industry likes to say.”

Solganik, though, complains that the limits set by California laws exceed those of other states, which could send businesses fleeing toward looser regulations--or could close them down completely.

“They’re trying to be overly protective,” Solganik said. “There’s a price that you have to pay for that, and the price is economic well-being.”

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At Lilly Industries Inc. in Montebello, several employees have paid that price in recent years, said plant manager Joe Seaton. In 1991, Lilly submitted a health risk assessment required by the AQMD. The report estimated a cancer risk of 338 cancer cases per million for workers and 15.6 cases per million for neighbors, based on chemicals, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and nickel in pigments used to manufacture paints.

The company has switched to pigments with less hazardous chemicals, but afterward, sales of several paint products have fallen, Seaton said. “You don’t get the clarity and brightness,” Seaton said. “Sometimes the paints will break down in the sunlight and fade.”

The company has laid off 22 of its 96 employees. Seaton said the switch to different pigments was a factor in the layoffs.

Some residents living near these plants say they fear the hot spots program could also affect their pocketbooks.

William Bowers, 56, a Long Beach resident who lives near the Douglas plant, said he’s concerned about the value of his property, as well as possible health hazards.

“When I sell my home, I’ll have to make a disclosure (if Douglas notifies the community) and say, ‘You may get cancer.’ What does that do to my home’s value?”

Beverly Hills real estate attorney Paula Reddish Zinnemann said she believes that property values will drop if communities are notified that plants are spewing out hazardous emissions. “Even with a diminished price, there are people who wouldn’t touch (such an area) with a 10-foot pole,” she said. “You’ll lose a section of the market entirely.”

Ironically, frustration over delays in the review process is probably the only point agreed on by both industry and environmentalists.

“This whole process has been typical bureaucracy at its worst,” said Gene Huber, a Bay Area environmental consultant. “They went out and did this and no one did it before. So they did it en masse and they did it very badly. . . . They haven’t completed the process in five years. They’re supposed to repeat it every two years.”

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To date, AQMD has finalized 14 of the 324 health risk assessments received. None of the final reports are from companies in the Southeast area. Program Supervisor Alene Taber, involved in reviewing the reports, said the first batch of notifications to businesses will go out later this month. Companies will then have a month to begin informing local communities.

Air quality officials say they would have liked reviews to go more quickly, but they bristle at criticism that they’ve dropped the ball.

When the program began, many companies submitted late reports, incomplete reports or didn’t submit them at all, Shaw said. The ones that did come in often had to be sent back for corrections.

But Marty said by far the biggest problem was volume.

“At the beginning of the program, nobody had any idea how many facilities would need risk assessments,” she said. “We thought (there would be) 60 or 70. The final number (statewide) was 725. Nobody foresaw that, so the resources needed to keep up with the workload aren’t there.”

Shaw said that, among those 725, between 100 and 200 companies in the South Coast district will probably have to notify neighbors about their facility, the toxic air pollutants they emit and the health risks they might cause. The facilities will then hold public meetings to answer their neighbors’ questions and concerns.

Even without notification and meetings, Shaw said, the program already has had an effect.

“Companies reduced because they didn’t want to notify. . . . Let’s face it, the public has an effect on policy.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pollution Hot Spots

Under a regional air-pollution program, 12 Southeast-area companies reported that their emissions of toxins would cause 10 or more cases of cancer among 1 million people, a level that could require notification of neighbors about health risks.

A. American United Global Inc. National O-Ring Division

11634 Patton Road, Downey

Operations: Manufactures rubber O-rings

Cancer risk: 20 per million (residents), 14 per million (workers)

Substances contributing to cancer risk: Hexavalent chromium

Response from Dan Melendez, company spokesman: Says company largely uses stainless steel molds and that harmful emissions from chromium molds have been cut back.

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B. Brea Canon Oil Co. Dominguez Hills Estates Site

19009 Laurel Park Road, Rancho Dominguez

Operations: Oil and gas production, storage

Cancer risk: 76.2 per million (residents); amended later to 3.53 per million*

Substances contributing to cancer risk: Benzene, toluene, xylene, formaldehyde, propylene

Response from Gwen Tellegen, manager of environmental engineering: Says original report grossly overestimated emissions. Says revised calculations have lowered risk so much that company may not have to notify neighbors.

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C. Consolidating Drum Reconditioning Inc.

1051 Union St., Montebello

Operations: Reconditions steel drums

Cancer risk: 15.3 per million (workers)

Substances contributing to cancer risk: Arsenic, formaldehyde, cadmium, nickel

Response from Calvin Lee, general manager: Says company has installed paint-spraying equipment that cuts down on paint in the air. Says company also is using more water-based paints that have fewer harmful solvents.

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D. Douglas Aircraft Co. (McDonnell Douglas division)

3855 Lakewood Blvd., Long Beach

Operations: Designs, manufactures aircraft

Cancer risk: 620 per million (residents)

Substances contributing to cancer risk: Chromium, benzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde , cadmium, epichlorohydrin, gasoline vapors, methylene chloride, nickel, perchloroethylene, styrene

Response from Robert Tomko, environmental manager: Says company has reduced emissions by installing stronger filters and reducing use of methylene chloride.

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E. Electro-Machine & Engineering Inc.

431B E. Oaks St., Compton.

Operations: Inspects, finishes aircraft parts

Cancer risk: 209.4 per million (residents); amended later to 35.7 per million*

Substances contributing to cancer risk: cadmium, hexavalent chromium

Response from Steve Turnbow, president: Says company has raised emission stacks from 20 to 40 feet, which disperses emissions more. Says plant largely stopped using chromic acid and has stronger filtration systems.

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F. Golden West Refining Co.

13539 E. Foster Road, Santa Fe Springs

Operations: Petroleum refining to produce gasoline and diesel fuel

Cancer risk: 181 per million (residents) and 49 per million (workers)

Substances contributing to cancer: Chromium, arsenic, benzene, butadiene

Response from Roger Kemple, senior vice president: Says company stopped refining in 1992, eliminating the biggest source of pollution, and now transports and stores oil. Says plant also has system that recovers vapors. Doubts company will have to notify residents.

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G. Lilly Industries Inc.

901 Union St., Montebello

Operations: Manufactures paints, coatings

Cancer risk: 338 per million (workers), 15.6 per million (residents); amended to .003 per million (workers) and .25 per million (residents)*

Substances contributing to cancer risk: cadmium compounds, hexavalent chromium, nickel

Response from Joe Seaton, plant manager: Says company has replaced pigments containing nickel, cadmium and lead chromate. Says changeover has hurt business and was a factor in laying off 22 employees.

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H. Northrop Grumman Corp. B-2 Division

8900 E. Washington Blvd., Pico Rivera

Operations: Manufactures the B-2 bomber

Cancer risk: 11.9 per million (residents); amended later to 1.4 per million*

Substances contributing to cancer: Hexavalent chromium, arsenic, benzene, butadiene, dioxane, formaldehyde, nickel, styrene, methyl dianiline

Response from James Hart, company spokesman: Says initial health-risk assessment was erroneous and that he doesn’t believe the company will have to notify the community. Plant is scheduled to close in 1997.

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I. Paramount Petroleum Corp.

14700 Downey Ave., Paramount

Operations: Petroleum refining

Cancer risk: 19.6 per million (residents)

Substances contributing to cancer: arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

Response: Could not be reached.

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J. Powerine Oil Co.

12354 Lakeland Road, Santa Fe Springs

Operations: Produces gasoline, jet and diesel fuel.

Cancer Risk: 120 per million (residents); amended later to 14.7 per million.

Substances contributing to cancer risk: benzene, formaldehyde, gasoline vapors, lead, nickel

Response from June Christman, company spokeswoman: Says original report contained technical errors and that company has stepped up repairs of emission leaks to help lower the health risk. Acknowledges that company officials will probably have to notify community.

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K. Rohm & Haas Co. (formerly Unocal Chemicals Division)

14445 Alondra Blvd., La Mirada

Operations: Produces latex products

Cancer risk: 4,900 per million (workers), 290 per million (residents); amended to 270 per million (workers), 26 per million (residents)*

Substances contributing to cancer risk: butadiene, styrene

Response from Steve Loughridge, plant manager: Says that after revised report was issued, company stopped using butadiene, which was responsible for most of the cancer risk.

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L. Santa Fe Enameling & Metal Finishing Co.

8427 Secura Way, Santa Fe Springs

Operations: Paints auto products, chairs, gym equipment.

Cancer risk: 14 per million (residents)

Substances contributing to cancer: Toluene, diisocyanate, hexavalent chromium, formaldehyde, thylene dichloride

Response from Ron Martin, owner: Says company now uses powder coatings with few solvents, no longer uses primers with chromium.

One business submitted a report indicating risks for health problems other than cancer. A chemical exposure level above 1.0 requires notification. A level above 5.0 requires the company to reduce harmful emissions.

M. McWhorter Technologies Inc. (formerly Cargill Inc.) 2801 Lynwood Road, Lynwood

Operations: Manufactures epoxy resins

Chronic hazard index: 5.6 (indicating high risk for respiratory problems)

Substances contributing to health risk: toluene diisocyanate

Response from Peter Stamps, company spokesman: Says company has installed more efficient burners that reduce emissions, now has vapor recovery systems on storage tanks.

* AQMD has yet to approve revised reports.