AQMD Begins Probe of Toxic Hot Spots

Checking residential neighborhoods for toxic hot spots, the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Tuesday launched a major venture to determine the cancer risk Southern Californians face from breathing polluted air in their communities, especially people in poor, minority areas.

The study, which will last 10 months, is the largest in a decade to monitor California communities for toxic air pollution.

Environmentalists have argued for several years that the AQMD has been slow in addressing concerns about “environmental justice.” The activists contend that minority, low-income neighborhoods bear the brunt of pollution because they are near industrial plants.

“This is long overdue,” declared Carlos Porras, Southern California director of Communities for a Better Environment.

“It’s already known that there are disproportionate impacts on poor, urban, minority communities, but this will generate more and better information about the nature of the risks in these localized hot-spot communities.”

10-Point Strategy Adopted Last Fall

The air monitoring is part of a 10-point strategy that the AQMD board adopted in October for combating pollution in largely poor, nonwhite areas.

Thirty compounds linked to cancer, birth defects, respiratory disease and other serious health problems will be measured. The chemicals, emitted by motor vehicles and hundreds of businesses, such as metal plating plants, aerospace factories and oil refineries, include benzene, lead and chromium.

AQMD officials will calculate the cancer threat to people exposed and spread the word to residents about what hazard they face.

The AQMD board is scheduled to use the first batches of data this fall when it debates whether to strengthen limits on toxic air pollution that were imposed on Southland businesses four years ago.

Starting on Glenoaks Boulevard in Pacoima, mobile monitors will be deployed in residential locations of 14 areas in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including Anaheim, Bell / Downey, Costa Mesa, Hawthorne, Montclair, Norco / Corona, Norwalk, Riverside, Rialto, San Pedro, South El Monte, Torrance and Van Nuys. In April, the AQMD began a separate yearlong collection of pollution data at 10 fixed sites, including downtown Los Angeles, Huntington Park, Wilmington and Long Beach.

The AQMD staff, advised by an independent panel of scientists and other technical experts, chose the 14 areas for the new study because they are suspected of having toxic hot spots, based on past air tests and proximity to major industries.

The AQMD has for years put a low priority on cancer-causing air pollutants and focused instead on cleaning up ozone, the primary ingredient of smog.

The new environmental justice initiative was spearheaded by Los Angeles sports promoter William Burke, the first African American to be appointed chairman of the AQMD board.

“The premise is that any citizen . . . regardless of race, creed, ethnicity and economic status, is entitled to an equal opportunity to breathe clean air,” said Mel Zeldin, the AQMD’s director of applied science and technology. “This [study] will provide a wealth of information to determine whether people who are economically disadvantaged are exposed to a greater risk than other people in the basin.”

Most of the communities to be monitored are immediately downwind of manufacturing plants and freeways. Also factored in during selection of the sites was the number of odor and pollution complaints from the public and a desire to spread the testing throughout the four counties, not just Los Angeles, which suffers the worst toxic pollution.

A 20-foot-long, 11,000-pound automated monitor will be set up at each site for four weeks, collecting air samples three times a week, then moving on to the next location. So far, specific addresses have been selected at only the first three sites--Pacoima, Hawthorne and Montclair.

Environmentalists have complained that the AQMD’s limits on toxic fumes from industry are too lax, since they allow a greater cancer risk than similar laws in several states and national guidelines.

When adopting the regulations in 1994, the AQMD board was dubious about the health threat and chose a pollution limit recommended by oil refineries and other major manufacturers. Under the limits, industries are allowed to emit toxic fumes that can cause 100 cancer cases among every 1 million people exposed--a standard only one-tenth as strict as the board’s staff had recommended.

The current regulations do not address the cumulative risks to people who live in communities with many industrial neighbors that use a wide variety of chemicals. The new tests will allow the board to consider changing pollution limits to base them on the total health risks to a community, which probably will mean tougher limits on each individual business.

Porras said people in Bell Gardens, Wilmington, Huntington Park and other communities are inflamed about pollution from industrial plants around their homes and schools and are angry with the AQMD for failing to protect them.

Residents Urged to Get Organized

In a mission to empower minority populations, Porras is urging residents of the tested areas to “organize your community and demand a more appropriate and accountable decision-making” by the air quality board.

Last year, Communities for a Better Environment filed a federal civil rights complaint against the air quality agency, accusing it of environmental racism. The group charges that the AQMD discriminates against people in the Wilmington and San Pedro area by allowing oil companies to invest in a pollution-trading program instead of reducing fumes from their industrial plants.

Facing the lawsuit, the AQMD board adopted its 10-point environmental justice strategy, including the $700,000 toxic air study.

Existing data show that most of the cancer risk in the Los Angeles Basin comes from two chemicals in vehicle exhaust--benzene and 1,3-butadiene--as well as chromium, which is released into the air by manufacturing plants.

But the current data, collected in 1987, are sketchy, providing only “a broad-brush look” at which cities face the highest cancer risk, Zeldin said. The new tests will allow the AQMD to pick out specific neighborhoods that experience the most dangerous pollution.

“We can’t obviously be sampling in every single community,” Zeldin said, but the AQMD will extrapolate the risk so all communities in the four counties can be informed of the danger they face.

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Measuring Toxic Air

Monitors will be places in these 14 residential areas, identified by the AQMD as possible hot spots, to study pollution levels.

* Areas suspected of having the most toxic air based on computer modeling, previous studies and proximity to industrial areas and major transportation corridors

Source: AQMD