Strategy Ordered to Curb Diesel Pollution : Air: AQMD will draft a plan to limit the sooty exhaust and other sources of carcinogenic emissions, such as refineries.

At the urging of angry residents, the Los Angeles region’s air quality board voted unanimously Friday to draft a far-reaching plan to reduce the cancer threat posed by factories, diesel engines and other sources of pollution.

The new plan will be the first comprehensive strategy in the nation aimed at protecting people from dozens of toxic air pollutants, ranging from diesel soot wafting from trucks to industrial solvents used by aerospace manufacturers.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District estimates that 1,500 of every 1 million residents in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties could be contracting cancer over a lifetime from breathing toxic chemicals. Motor vehicles account for 90% of the cancer risk, according to the AQMD’s calculations, with diesel exhaust by far the single largest source.

The AQMD board heard two hours of emotional testimony from several dozen people, many of them from Wilmington, Carson, Bell Gardens and Huntington Park. Although the speakers applauded the AQMD’s intent to regulate fleets of diesel trucks, they vigorously demanded more stringent rules for oil refineries and other plants polluting the air in their communities.

“Every day that goes by, people are dying,” said Maggie Perales, a Bell Gardens resident whose 14-year-old brother attended a school next to chrome-plating plants and died of cancer. “We need these emission levels radically reduced.”

Until the board acts, she said, the AQMD is letting companies “contaminate our communities and kill our children.”

Many of the most vocal residents advocating a crackdown were from Bell Gardens, where Suva Elementary School sits next to two closed chrome-plating plants. The plants emitted high concentrations of hexavalent chromium--a highly potent carcinogen. Residents suspect that childhood cancers in the neighborhood were caused by the fumes, although health studies have not detected an abnormal cancer rate there.

Under an existing AQMD regulation adopted in 1994, companies in the four-county region must limit the cancer risk their emissions pose to 100 cancer cases among every 1 million people exposed.

For two years, the AQMD staff has debated whether to set a more stringent limit. Area businesses have raised objections, while community activists, largely among poor, minority areas of Los Angeles County, have campaigned to overhaul the existing rule.

“It is time. We want a date. We want a commitment from the board,” Carlos Porras of the Los Angeles-based Communities for a Better Environment told the board.

Board members, however, did not set a deadline for adopting a tougher regulation. Several of them, though, asked AQMD Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein to attempt to bring them a proposal early next year. He had intended to give the board a proposal in June but vowed Friday to accelerate the pace.

Board Chairman William Burke, who voted in 1994 to set the limit at 100 cancer cases per 1 million people, said Friday that he now believes that regulation is too weak to protect people. When it was adopted, a majority of the board members were swayed by industry opposition and skeptical about the cancer threat, so they set limits much less stringent than their staff had recommended.

Business groups are worried about the economic impact of possibly having to reduce use of dozens of industrial compounds. Mike Carroll, an attorney who represents several oil and aerospace companies, said the AQMD’s existing toxics rule is already the most stringent in the nation.

“There really aren’t any hot spots across the basin. The risk is pretty even,” he said.

A study by the AQMD searched for pockets of high cancer risk around large industrial plants, including refineries. But preliminary data found none. For example, the cancer risk was found to be lower in Torrance, immediately downwind of the Mobil Oil refinery, than on a major street in Compton near homes.

Because trucks are blamed for causing most of the cancer risk, the new anti-toxics plan will largely focus on regulations that require and encourage some companies to equip portions of their fleets with engines that run on alternative fuels rather than diesel.

Also Friday, the board approved spending $25 million on replacing more than 800 diesel trucks, buses and forklifts with versions that run on cleaner-burning natural gas, propane or electricity. Twenty-six tugboats and tractors also will be equipped with newer, less-polluting diesel engines. The money comes from fees added to vehicle registration costs and a new state fund authorized last year.