Don’t Use Kids as Canaries at Belmont

Like most important decisions, what to do with the Belmont Learning Complex is neither unanimous nor clear. Impassioned feelings about educational opportunity and race have swayed many people to ignore danger. The independent commission appointed by the Los Angeles Unified School District board seemed unable to focus on safety or give more credence to assurances that a way could be found to engineer a safe level of contaminating gases.

As a physician who deals daily with poisons, the confusion is understandable, but tragic. The issue is not one of hazardous waste or of multiple gases escaping from the soil to the air at the site.

The issue is hydrogen sulfide, or H2S--rotten egg gas. This gas killed people before it was named, at least 300 years ago. It kills by combining with the iron in a crucial enzyme that lets our cells use oxygen. A large dose, one breath or two, stops our metabolic machine. We die, unable to use surrounding oxygen. Lesser doses kill the more susceptible cells in the brain, heart and kidney. Effects of small doses accumulate so that vital functions deteriorate insidiously. When the brain deteriorates, the ability to think, reason and remember decreases. Vision constricts from the sides, like looking down a tunnel. Balance fails in the dark. The speed of reaction slows. The poisoned people look normal but behave as if they were 80 or 90 years old.

Hydrogen sulfide-exposed children have trouble recalling lessons and reciting, and they lose the ability to read. They eventually drop out of school. A patient of mine in Wilmington, who is a teacher, made this observation in the months after the Texaco refinery explosion exposed Long Beach and Wilmington to levels of H2S as high as 24 parts per million in 1992.

Concern about H2S at low concentrations adversely affecting the function of human brains is relatively new. Can the Belmont complex be made safe for children when sited on an oil field perforated by well and bore holes, cracks and faults that allow gases rich in H2S to percolate to the surface? Collections of the other gas--methane--burn, but poisoning is caused by H2S. Measurements of H2S at Belmont have varied from 1 ppm to more than 350 ppm in past months. Safe levels are below 1 ppm (with the caveat that 0.1 ppm should be the level to ensure safety of children). Considering that day-to-day variation in concentrations can be 100 times, higher concentrations are likely after an earthquake.

Is this Belmont problem the tip of a H2S iceberg? Los Angeles and Long Beach and cities in between are on oil fields. We are not lacking in local evidence aside from the Wilmington students’ problems. The Red Line subway tunnels have had levels of 5 ppm to 8 ppm. Such levels cause headaches, nausea and malaise that may interfere with alertness in train operators.

The suggestion that protection systems have been installed and work for many buildings in Los Angeles needs to be examined in a different light. As human beings’ brains are at risk, have brains been protected? At a minimum before considering that no episodes or incidents have occurred, environmental measurements for H2S need to be made in buildings and, most important, people need to be tested. Careful testing of brain functions in exposed people from areas with H2S need to be compared to those of people in unexposed areas.

The question of safety is relative. Since the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the amendments that established the Environmental Protection Agency, much effort has gone into estimating safe levels for exposure to chemicals in the air, water and soil. This is called establishing standards. Having been a member of several standard-setting teams, I know that standards are compromises that factor in costs of compliance. Rarely do they guarantee safety. Add to this that once set, practically all standards have been made more stringent based on evidence that they were not protecting everyone. Thus the H2S standard of 10 ppm does not guarantee safety.

Most standards were set to reduce cancer risks. Of the major standards for workplace or environmental exposure, only the one for lead focuses on the human brain and considers children instead of healthy workers.

Surely, as we assess the dangers from H2S in this basin, we should not do unconscionable experiments. Mitigation of exposure has been debated vehemently with cost figures varying from less than $20 million to more than $60 million. The variance is not the point. The point is the safety and the length of time that a system must function, which is for the life of the learning complex.

Logic suggests that, before proceeding, many H2S monitors should be installed at the Belmont site in simulated classrooms, playing fields, basements and other areas to obtain better estimates of the magnitude of exposure and ranges. Simultaneously, all the problems of engineering removal of H2S need to be addressed. The subway experience should be examined. Finally, with these data, the school board must weigh whether any risks to children exist. To thrust Belmont students into the role of canaries in the coal mine is immoral.