Lompoc Air Tests Fail to Explain Rash of Illnesses

Newly completed research has failed to pinpoint the cause of respiratory illnesses that afflict residents of Lompoc in unusually large numbers, leaving scientists and the farm town’s state senator saying that more testing must be conducted.

The state Department of Pesticide Regulation said this week that fewer than one-fourth of the air samples taken last summer around the Santa Barbara County community contained pesticides, the suspected cause of illnesses ranging from bronchitis to lung cancer.

The pesticides were found in concentrations that appear to be “well below the level of health concern,” according to the report.

But the state agency stressed that its findings are only preliminary. And the committee overseeing research into the Lompoc illnesses said the results will not be conclusive without a second round of testing this summer.

The findings come eight months after a previous study determined that Lompoc residents suffer from asthma, bronchitis and lung cancer much more than people in neighboring communities.

Some locals blame a haze they call the “Lompoc crud” for difficulty breathing, hair loss and even cancer. Farmers have said there is no reason to target their pesticides as the cause of illnesses plaguing the town of 41,000.

The confrontation between residents and farmers is one that observers expect to become more common across California, as housing subdivisions creep into agricultural territory.

Both sides in the pesticide dispute agreed that this week’s findings would not be enough to end a nearly decade-long dispute.

State Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) and community activists are pushing hard for funding to pay for another round of tests that might be definitive.

“It’s very depressing that we still don’t have an answer,” O’Connell said. “We need to finish the work.”

Activists say the results could be much different this year, particularly if, as expected, sampling is increased for methyl bromide, a highly toxic fumigant that many farmers pump into their cropland.

But the lack of a final determination by scientists did not stop the two sides in the debate from attempting to use the new study to their advantage.

In a prepared statement, Richard Quandt, president of the Grower-Shipper Vegetable Assn., said the results show “that the use of pesticides by farmers in the Lompoc area does not pose a health risk to Lompoc residents.”

The farmers group also said the three chemicals found in measurable quantities just as easily could have been put in the air by building fumigators or homeowners spraying their backyards.

But George Rauh--a onetime substitute teacher whose bronchitis led him to help found Volunteers for a Healthy Valley--said the presence of chemicals in the state tests supports his suspicions.

“You can’t tell us that these are low levels of these chemicals, when people are bombarded by them day after day for a lifetime,” Rauh said. “And it’s multiple chemicals. No one knows the effect that has.”

Some skeptics previously doubted that people in Lompoc were even getting sick in unusual numbers.

But epidemiologists from the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment last summer released a study that identified 69% more bronchitis cases, 58% more asthma cases and 37% more lung cancer cases than in neighboring cities and counties.

The committee of scientists and local residents formed to find the root of the illnesses is also looking into other possible causes--including natural radon gas or perhaps silicon that might have been released from a local manufacturing plant that once made diatomaceous earth, a soil treatment. The plant closed last year, around the time of the testing.

A spokesman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency said the agency continues to believe that a second round of air sampling in Lompoc is needed.

Rauh agrees.

“We have been waiting for this information since 1990 and nothing has changed,” he said. “People are still getting sick.”