COVER STORY : Emission Impossible? : Lack of Information, Bureaucracy Stall AQMD Program to Inform Residents of Nearby Air Polluters

Myra Iniguez, an eighth-grader at St. Aloysius School in Walnut Park, was stricken with asthma shortly after her family moved to a heavily industrialized area just blocks from the school. A classmate, 14-year-old Luis Mendez, had three or four asthma attacks in one year, but he has improved since his family moved to Huntington Park several months ago.

The health problems trouble Sister Anna Marie, the school’s principal.

“Asthma is pretty abundant around here, more than I’ve encountered at previous schools,” Marie said. “I think (it) is directly related to contaminants in the air.”

Though Marie and others lack hard proof, they suspect the trouble stems from an industrial corridor of plating and metal-finishing companies, degreasing plants and junkyards on South Alameda Street near St. Aloysius.

A 1991 company report submitted to regional air quality officials found that air pollution emitted by LA Parkerizing Co., a metal finishing and coating facility less than a mile from the school, posed one of the biggest health risks among plants in the central Los Angeles area. According to the report, students at St. Aloysius may be exposed to relatively high levels of lead, which can cause respiratory and kidney problems.

Yet students and school officials said they only learned of the report’s findings when a reporter came to call. Some expressed concern that they had not been told of the report, filed with the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“It gets me very mad,” said 15-year-old Iniguez. “It’s not right that people can affect other people without asking, just so they can make money.”

Under AQMD rules, neighborhoods such as the one surrounding St. Aloysius are supposed to be notified about air polluters in their midst. But both businesses and environmentalists complain that the rules set up an unwieldy procedure so mired in bureaucracy that they doubt the program will ever get in gear. And some companies are evidently still unaware of their obligations under the law.

The five-county AQMD began an ambitious program in 1989 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 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 six years, and officials say it may be years more before it is completed.

Preliminary documents on file at the AQMD show that of 42 central Los Angeles companies required to submit reports to the agency, 12 would have to notify neighbors. But according to the AQMD, none have done so. Four had levels high enough to require emissions reductions.

The AQMD says it is finalizing the reports and will then take action to ensure companies comply with the law.

“It’s taken us longer than we would have liked” to follow through on the program, said Ben Shaw, senior manager of the Air Toxics Program at AQMD. But “there is a mind-boggling amount of work involved.”

Shaw said the agency began its first public notifications early this year, involving an airline and a plating company near LAX.

LA Parkerizing, the company close to St. Aloysius School, in 1991 reported an estimated cancer risk rate of 84.72 cases per million, a level that would require public notification but not necessarily emissions reductions. According to the report, the company emitted a number of carcinogens including cadmium, crystalene silica, lead, nickel and selenium.

Jim Pease, general manager of LA Parkerizing, said that since he took over operations last year, the 25-employee company has cleaned up its plant and reduced potentially harmful emissions, which he attributes to a zinc phosphate coating process.

“I wanted to make sure that what we do here (creates) the cleanest environment possible,” Pease said. “We’ve repaired (treatment) tanks and closed drains” that could spill harmful chemicals, he added.

Although the company meets numerous environmental, health and safety requirements from various state and federal agencies, Pease said he was not aware of the public notification requirement under the AQMD program.

Some other companies also seemed unfamiliar with the program.

Al’s Plating Co. in Los Angeles last year reported an estimated cancer risk rate of 160 per million, a level so high it would require not only notification but also emissions reductions. According to its report, the plating facility emits perchloroethylene and chlorine, which can cause kidney, liver and respiratory problems.

Yet in a brief interview, president Al Vasquez presented a different view.

“We don’t have any cancer risks here,” he said. The figures in the AQMD report “could be debated,” he added. The company hired a consultant to prepare the report filed with AQMD.

Al’s Plating was one of four plating companies on the AQMD list. Others targeted do everything from making glycerin to recycling industrial drums. They’re found in low-income neighborhoods such as Walnut Park or in industrial areas in Commerce or Los Angeles. A few--such as LA Parkerizing--are close to schools.

As stacks of reports awaiting approval pile up at the AQMD, both businesses and environmentalists are holding their breath.

The AQMD’s Toxic Hot Spots program was intended as “the first sweeping approach to air toxics,” said Shaw, the program’s senior 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 of the worst offenders were required to perform a more detailed study called a health-risk assessment.

In the assessment, a company estimates the toxic chemicals 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.

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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 with best-guess assumptions.

As a result, neither industry representatives nor environmentalists are happy. Industry argues that such programs constitute a bureaucracy that exaggerates health risks and drives businesses from the state. Air-quality activists say the program moves far too slowly, ignores some hazards and may help perpetuate “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?”

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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 a lifetime, literally 24 hours a day, for 70 years. Few if any people would remain in one place for that long, industry experts say, and thus the regulations overestimate the level of exposure and the risk to neighbors.

Furthermore, they say, the hazards from industrial chemicals pale in comparison to those from 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.

C. Mugleston, president of AA Wastewater, a consulting firm that performed the health-risk assessment for Al’s Plating Co., said that AQMD deliberately skews the statistics.

“Their numbers maximize the risk,” Mugleston said.

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.

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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.

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 central Los Angeles. Of the 11 area companies that might have to notify neighbors based on their preliminary reports, for example, four are in Commerce and three are in South Gate.

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

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

Some industry observers complain, though, that the limits set by California laws exceed those of other states, which could send companies fleeing toward looser regulations--or could close them down completely. And even environmentalists agree that small businesses could be hit hardest.

“Small businesses are the ones that suffer from a lack of general information” about how to survive under clean-air regulations, said Carlos Porras, Southern California director of Citizens for a Better Environment, a private nonprofit group.

Factory managers and environmentalists also find common ground in their frustration over delays in the AQMD review process.

Some observers say the program has moved so slowly that certain data have probably grown obsolete. Indeed, at least one area business on the AQMD list--Waymire Drum Co. in South Gate--has moved since filing its report in 1991.

Porras said that air quality officials may be proceeding slowly because “once people start getting notices, there’s going to be a considerable amount of concern.”

“Once notification begins, AQMD will become part of the pressure point,” he said. “The community is going to want to hold AQMD responsible for the cancer risks.”

Bay Area environmental consultant Gene Huber offered a more blunt critique: “The whole process has been typical bureaucracy at its worst.”

Air quality officials 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, officials said. The ones that did come in often had to be sent back for corrections.

But Shaw said the biggest problem was volume.

“The law was enacted in 1987, but didn’t take effect until 1990,” he said. “Up to that point, we didn’t have a clue how many companies would report; we thought maybe 50 to 70 (health assessments) would be required statewide. As it’s turned out, there’s been 725 statewide, 325 in South Coast alone. . . . The typical facility files a report in three volumes about a foot thick.”

AQMD officials said that under 100 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.”

Community correspondent Mary Helen Berg contributed to this report.

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Toxic Hot Spots

Under a regional air pollution program, 12 local firms 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:

* Ace Plating Co., 719 S. Towne Ave., Los Angeles Operations: Metal finishing and electroplating Cancer risk: 20 per million (residents), 20 per million (workers) Substance contributing to cancer risk: Hexavalent chromium. Response from environmental chemist Elvira R. Lorenzo: Company still uses hexavalent chromium but has installed new equipment that sharply cuts down emissions. “I think the (health risk assessment) needs to be remodeled,” Lorenzo said.

* Al’s Plating Co., 318 W. 131st St., Los Angeles Operations: Plating Cancer risk: 2.2 per million (residents), 160 per million (workers) Substance contributing to cancer risk: Perchloroethylene Response from president Al Vasquez: Company denies that it emits carcinogens.

* Anadite Metal Finishing, 10647 Garfield Ave., South Gate Operations: Provides corrosion-resistant metal finishing Cancer risk: 24.5 per million (residents) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Dioxane, perchloroethylene and hexavalent chromium. Response: Could not be reached for comment.

* Daelco Division, Quenell Inc., 5909 E. Randolph St., Commerce Operations: Makes oxidized form of lead for use in batteries and other products Cancer risk: 6.1 per million (residents), 610 per million (workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Lead Response: Did not return phone call.

* Henkel Corp., Emery Group, 5568 E. 68th St., Los Angeles Operations: Makes fatty acids and glycerine Cancer risk: 21.1 per million (residents), 13.3 per million (workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Nickel, polynucleararomatic hydrocarbons, lead, arsenic, chloroform. Response from health safety and environmental manager Scott Zerga: Since reporting to AQMD, company has stopped burning a residue containing nickel, which could significantly alter numbers.

* Hickory Springs, 4542 E. Dunham St., Commerce Operations: Makes flexible polyurethane products such as foam and carpet Cancer risk: 40.51 per million (residents and workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Methylene chloride Response: Did not return phone calls.

* LA Parkerizing Co., 8205 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles Operations: Metal finishing and coating. Cancer risk: 16.47 per million (residents), 84.72 per million (workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Cadmium, selenium, crystallene silica and nickel. Response from general manager Jim Pease: Company has cut back or eliminated use of chemicals cited in AQMD report and meets numerous other environmental standards.

* PQ Corp., 8401 Quartz Ave., South Gate Operations: Makes sodium silicate Cancer risk: 51.2 per million (residents), 44.4 per million (workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Hexavalent chromium, polynucleararomatic hydrocarbons, nickel, benzene, formaldehyde and arsenic. Response from environmental health and safety supervisor Fred Casey: Company has stopped burning fuel oil and is replacing potentially hazardous chrome bricks. It also intends to file an AQMD report that may correct errors in 1989 statistics. “We’re sitting pretty good,” Casey said.

* Ramcar Batteries Inc., 2700 Carrier Ave., Commerce Operations: Makes lead plates for auto and marine lead acid batteries Cancer risk: 39 per million (workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Lead. Response from President Cliff Crowe: Company has been considering reducing lead emissions. “It’s a continuing process. We haven’t changed the process completely yet,” he said.

* Standard Nickel Chromium Plating Co, 826 E. 62nd St., Los Angeles Operations: Hard-chrome plating on oil well and drilling parts Cancer risk: 214 per million (residents) 30.8 per million (workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Hexavalent chromium and perchloroethylene. Response: Could not be reached for comment.

* United Alloys, 900 E. Slauson Ave., Los Angeles Operations: Metal degreasing Cancer risk: 17.4 per million (workers) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Percholoroethylene Response: Could not be reached for comment.

* Waymire Drum Co., 9316 S. Atlantic Ave., South Gate Operations: Reconditions drums Cancer risk: 170 per million (residents) Substances contributing to cancer risk: Perchloroethylene, dioxane, methlyene chloride. Response: Did not return phone calls. Note: This information is based on emissions at company’s former site at 7702 Maie Ave. in Los Angeles.

Source: Health risk assessments conducted by South Coast Air Quality Management District.