Breathing Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Start with ammonia gas from a Camarillo power plant. Add pesticide from an Oxnard farm, solvent from a Thousand Oaks dry cleaner, a puff of diesel exhaust from a truck in Moorpark and a pinch of paint vapors from a remodeled house in Ojai. Mix with fog and sea breezes, then bake with sunshine over Simi Valley.

That is the recipe for a chemical soup that pollutes Ventura County skies. By the close of business each day, 34 tons of toxic chemicals are pumped into the air, according to the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District.

Among the polluters are landfills, dry cleaners, gas stations, incinerators, mines, locomotives, tractor-trailer trucks, factories, farms, boats, body shops, metal platers and military bases. The local air agency has identified 78 large polluters and 101 gasoline stations that emit toxic fumes.

It’s all perfectly legal, a byproduct of the American lifestyle. But air pollution experts are increasingly focusing on this kind of pollution as a health hazard. The chemicals have been linked to everything from cancer to birth defects, cell damage and central nervous system injury. Unlike ordinary smog, which is abundant in summer, these compounds are often invisible and are prevalent throughout the year.

“You can’t just look at the color of the air, because you can’t see a lot of this stuff. Blue sky is not the only criterion for healthy air,” said Mike Stubblefield, air quality coordinator for the Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club.

Although the hazard has declined considerably in the last 10 years as air has become cleaner, the cancer risk is still 223 times greater than the target set by the Clean Air Act. Compared with the rest of California, the risk of developing cancer from simply inhaling ranks Ventura County 15th among all counties, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, a national advocacy group.

“Air toxics are a health risk. It’s not something people can avoid,” said Terri Thomas, supervisor of the air toxics program for the county air quality agency. “The risk is not high, but it’s not trivial. It’s not something to panic over, but it’s something we are concerned about.”

Government has been trying to reduce emissions for 30 years, but the problem persists, particularly in urban areas. Big factories are putting less of these compounds into the air, but as individual companies clean up, more and more of the pollution is coming from countless smaller sources, ranging from auto exhaust to nail polish remover. Pinpointing the health hazard is difficult because government agencies have few methods to directly measure toxins in the air.

What is clear is that some communities bear the brunt of the pollution. For example, 48% of all chemical vapors released by big factories in the county in 1998 originated in Oxnard, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency. Six of the top 10 toxic polluters are there.

One is the Polycom-Huntsman plastics plant, which last year released about 800 pounds of styrene monomer, which can cause nausea and muscle fatigue. Even though emissions are down three-quarters from five years ago, life in the shadow of noxious fumes can be miserable.

“When the wind blows from the east, that’s when the smell is worse,” said Claudia Niell, who lives in a trailer park next to the plastics plant. “It can get real bad, but when we keep the doors shut, it’s much better.”

Rural Area Not Immune to Pollution

The effects are not felt just in urban areas. In Lockwood Valley, amid tall pines and mountains on the county’s northern rim, some people are selling their homes to flee dust and noxious odors they trace to the Pacific Custom Materials clay mine. To manufacture lightweight concrete for high-rise construction, the mine burns clay mixed with up to 3.2 million gallons of diesel fuel annually--more than any other industrial facility in Southern California, according to air quality officials.

County officials are investigating complaints of respiratory problems, rashes, nausea and headaches among some residents. “It feels like they are spraying diesel in your nose,” said Edward Gertner, who wears a mask while working around the 20-acre mountain parcel he purchased adjacent to the mine. “The worst thing is you can’t get away. It makes you feel angry, totally powerless and frustrated.”

But the greatest risks from air toxins are probably not downwind of factory smokestacks. Recent studies show that micro-environments from auto interiors to portable classrooms trap air toxins.

Fuel products, including benzene and diesel exhaust, flood auto interiors, according to a state Air Resources Board study of vehicles on congested freeways in Los Angeles County and Sacramento.

Statewide, about 2 million students studying in portable classrooms could face a lifetime cancer risk two to three times higher than federally accepted levels because of formaldehyde and other chemicals used in the construction of prefabricated buildings, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group. Even in Ventura County, where tourists flock to sunny beaches under blue skies, virtually everyone is exposed to cancer-causing emissions, often at levels exceeding health limits, according to air quality officials.

Assessing an individual’s risk is difficult, however. An federal EPA computer program, called ASPEN, was useful for estimating toxic air exposure over a wide area, like a county, but it is less reliable for specific towns or city blocks, according to the agency.

In the real world, air quality officials have little idea how much toxic pollution is actually blowing in the wind. While California has about 200 smog monitoring stations, only 21 measure airborne poisons.

County Has 1 Air Monitoring Station

Ventura County spans 1,884 square miles, but toxic air contaminants are measured at a single location, Simi Valley High School. The station tests for 33 metals and 25 volatile organic compounds, but that represents a fraction of the 188 hazardous air pollutants identified by the federal EPA, and an even smaller portion of the thousands of chemicals used by industry.

Furthermore, some of the most dangerous airborne substances, including diesel exhaust, acrolein and certain pesticides, are not monitored at the Simi Valley site. Studies have linked diesel exhaust to asthma, allergies and lung cancer.

Found in smoke and pesticides and burned gasoline, acrolein damages lung and throat tissue, and exposure to low concentrations can be lethal.

The good news is fewer and fewer toxins are being spewed into the air each year. Beginning in 1990, the federal EPA developed standards requiring 174 different industries to control toxic emissions. So far, 50 standards have been adopted and 59 are pending. So far, the EPA estimates these regulations have reduced emissions of contaminants by 1 million tons annually across the nation, 10 times more than was achieved in the 20 years before 1990.

In Ventura County, power plants and large manufacturers reported discharges of 83,000 pounds of toxins in 1998, down 73% in five years, according to Cal/EPA.

The Imation Corp. plant in Camarillo cut emissions of solvent vapors to less than one-tenth of 1994 levels, more than any other big polluter in the county, according to Cal/EPA. The factory, which employs 500 workers to make magnetic tape for computers, uses tons of solvents. In 1993, the firm installed four giant carbon filtration tanks to recycle the fumes, said Chuck Maxwell, a company environmental engineer.

Other companies that posted dramatic reductions in hazardous gases over the same period are Procter & Gamble Paper Products Co. and Cook Composites and Polymers in Oxnard, and Shamban Polymers Corp. in Newbury Park.

At Moorpark’s Kavlico Corp., makers of sensors for commercial and military aircraft, an environmental team was formed 10 years ago with the goal of eliminating all toxic releases. Plant managers switched to water-based cleansers from petroleum-based solvents. Although the company has not met its zero-discharge goal--in 1998 it released 10,482 pounds of 1,1 dichloro-1-fluoroethane--it slashed its emissions by 81% over the last five years, according to Cal/EPA.

“As EPA and others started to impose harsher restrictions on these chemicals, the cost to procure them went up,” said Kavlico Vice President Bruce Tackman. “If you can find alternatives to do the same process absent the costs associated with the chemicals, then you save money in the long haul. It’s good business, it’s good for the environment, and it helps us produce product in a cost-effective manner.”

Other companies have not done as well. OLS Energy emits an average of 82 pounds of ammonia daily from its 30-megawatt power plant at the Cal State Northridge satellite campus in Camarillo. Showing that some environmental gains come at a cost, the ammonia is injected into exhaust to control nitrogen dioxide, which contributes to ozone, a main ingredient in smog.

Vehicles Remain Worst Polluters

Similarly, new technologies and growth have led to a fivefold increase in ammonia emissions since 1994 at the Willamette Industries paper mill in Oxnard. The factory, which recycles cardboard boxes, emitted 12,405 pounds of toxic air pollution in 1998, according to Cal/EPA.

Only one company, Coastal Multichrome Inc. of Oxnard, a metal plating shop, has been identified by regulators as posing an unacceptably high cancer risk to neighbors. A study prepared by the company in 1995 revealed people living downwind had a cancer risk of 1.3 in 10,000, more than 13 times above regulatory limits. Elimination of a solvent has reduced the risk, but hexavalent chromium gases persist at levels deemed potentially harmful to people living nearby, said Thomas, of the county air quality agency.

Coastal Multichrome has five years to reduce its emissions to safe levels, although it is eligible for a 10-year extension if it misses the target, Thomas said. To date, the company has not submitted plans indicating when it will comply and the air district has no plans to force the shop to do so, she added.

As more and more factories and power plants trim emissions, other sources are emerging as problems.

“Where are the biggest air toxics sources? Right over there,” Thomas said, gesturing out her window to cars zooming along California 126 through Ventura.

Tailpipes produce half the toxic air emissions in the county. Trucks, buses, cars and motorcycles spew about 13.5 tons of contaminants into the air daily. Jet skis, tractors, all-terrain vehicles and other off-road machines contribute an additional four tons per day. In contrast, all the industrial facilities in the county combined emit about one ton of toxic fumes a day, according to the federal EPA.

And the chemicals from tailpipes are particularly noxious. Four substances common in the county’s air--hexavalent chromium, formaldehyde, 1,3 butadiene and carbon tetrachloride--account for two-thirds of the health hazard. Virtually all those substances come from vehicles, Thomas said.

“What jumps out at you is what a small part of the problem all those smokestack factories are,” said David Roe, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund. “The numbers show that cars, trucks and small businesses tend to be responsible for much more of the air’s toxicity than is generally recognized.”

It’s not that cars are getting dirtier. California cars are the cleanest in the world. It’s just that there are so many of them. About 11 million cars operate across the greater Los Angeles region, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. And commuters drive farther than they used to, logging 300 million miles every day, enough to travel to the sun and back three times.

To make deep cuts in toxic emissions, emphasis has to shift from businesses to vehicles in a far greater way than ever before, regulators and environmentalists say.

Farms, Businesses Add to Toxic Stew

Meanwhile, a hodgepodge of sources dispersed over a wide area together pack a big pollution wallop of a different sort. Collectively called “area sources,” they include dry cleaners, paints, farms, auto body shops, gasoline stations and consumer products.

An assortment of household products, from bug spray to furniture cleaners, emit about 54 tons of air pollutants in California daily, according to the state air board. Windshield washer fluid, for example, emits more than eight tons of air pollutants statewide, nearly as much as all the gases produced by all Los Angeles area oil refineries.

Last year, Ventura County farmers applied 6.6 million pounds of pesticides to lemon trees, strawberries and other crops, according to the state Department of Pesticide Regulation. The chemicals are essential to the county’s $1-billion agriculture industry.

Fifty-two tons of pesticides were discharged within 1 1/2 miles of Rio Mesa High School and 60 tons near Rio Plaza Elementary, according to a 1995 survey by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group.

Not long after John Cort began teaching at Rio Del Valle Junior High School in El Rio 27 years ago, the lemon trees that surrounded the playground fence on three sides were replaced with strawberries, a crop that requires significant use of pesticides. A nonsmoker, Cort now suffers chronic respiratory problems and has had 11 throat operations, although the cause is unknown.

“We have to evacuate our students off the fields because of the spraying by tractors and helicopters,” Cort said. “They sprayed something this year and half the staff had sinus infections. There’s some bad stuff going on here.”

Environmentalists say that with so many pesticide releases, harmful amounts are bound to reach nearby neighborhoods. Yet there is no way to know where all of it goes. That is because monitoring of pesticide releases is even more spotty than for other forms of toxic air pollution.

State officials have tested for pesticides in the air in communities near California farms 37 times between 1986 and 1998, an average of three times per year. Most of the sampling was done in the San Joaquin Valley. The last time pesticides were monitored in Ventura County neighborhoods was February 1990, according to the state pesticide department.

“If you don’t look very hard, you don’t find anything. We know there’s pesticides in the air, but we’re not testing for them,” said Marc Chytilo, an attorney for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.

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Biggest Polluters

Twenty-six large manufacturers released 83,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air in Ventura County in 1998, a 73% reduction from five years ago. Nearly half the emissions originate in Oxnard. Here are the top 10:

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Source: California Environmental Protection Agency

Ambient Air Risk Samples collected in Simi Valley show air in Ventura County poses a cancer risk. While the danger is diminishing due to cleanup efforts, the hazard is still unacceptably high.

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Source: Ventura County Air Pollution Control District

Sources of Pollution

Vehicles account for half the toxic air pollution in Ventura County. As major industries clean up, households and small businesses, including dry cleaners and auto shops, emerge as big pollution contributors.

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* Area sources include dry cleaners, paint shops, metal platers, households and portable engines.

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Source: California Environmental Protection Agency