AQMD Tightens Cancer Rule

By MARLA CONE

March 18, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER

Southern California’s air quality board on Friday approved a hotly disputed measure that will force large industrial polluters to reduce the cancer threats they pose in residential neighborhoods.

Businesses must meet a new limit that reduces the cancer risk 75% from the standard set by the South Coast Air Quality Management District six years ago.

At a hearing before the vote Friday, several hundred residents from Wilmington, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park and other communities with large factories criticized the AQMD’s new measure as too weak to protect them from cancer, asthma and other serious diseases linked to toxic air pollutants.

“We are here to protect public health for all and demand justice for our communities,” said Carlos Porras of Communities for a Better Environment, an activist group that brought five busloads of men, women and children to the meeting. “We ask you to uphold simple values of putting life over money.”

Representatives of oil companies and other major manufacturing industries, however, called the standard too costly and difficult to achieve, warning the AQMD board that it could result in a loss of jobs.

“We don’t need to sacrifice our manufacturing jobs on the altar of fear,” said Robert Wyman, a Los Angeles attorney representing oil refineries, aerospace plants and other large manufacturers. “Instead, we can strike a balance.”

The new rule is the first step in implementing an ambitious new AQMD plan to reduce toxic fumes that could be causing thousands of cancers among residents of the Los Angeles region. Trucks and cars are blamed for 90% of the dangerous pollutants, but AQMD officials say some factories also pose excessive health risks.

From Equilon’s oil refinery in Wilmington to Kwikset Corp. in Anaheim, an estimated two dozen companies in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties would violate the new limit at current emission levels, according to preliminary data from the AQMD. All but five are in Los Angeles County.

The companies have to find ways to cut emissions of cancer-causing compounds such as benzene and chromium. Their total estimated cost would be $1.2 million a year through 2015--relatively low in the world of air pollution control.

The board narrowly rejected a staff proposal that would have set a more stringent cancer risk limit that would have put about 40 companies in violation. It also refused to make the limits as stringent as environmentalists wanted. Instead, the board members, on an 8-1 vote, chose a standard closer to an industry proposal than its staff had recommended.

Both sides left disappointed. Although they won some concessions, industry leaders said some companies will still be unable to meet the new standards. Porras and other environmentalists called it a “significant step forward” from existing rules, but vowed to keep waging their battle against industrial pollution.

The rule relies on risk assessments that attempt to calculate the number of cancers that could be contracted by people who routinely breathe a company’s air pollutants.

Industries must limit the health risk they pose to 25 cancers for every million people exposed over a lifetime. The AQMD’s existing standard is 100 cancers per million. The staff originally proposed a limit of 10 cancers per million.

Manufacturing groups urged a 50-per-million standard--which would have been met by all but about 12 businesses. Environmentalists, on the other hand, wanted it set at 1 per million, which would have forced improvements at more than 200 companies.

The agency moved to tighten its old standard after large numbers of people in communities with major industries demanded more protection in recent years. The new standard is one of the board’s 10 “environmental justice” initiatives aimed at protecting primarily minority and low-income neighborhoods from air pollution.

Friday’s four-hour hearing pitted worried and angry residents--most of them Latinos, and many of them mothers carrying babies--against the large factories that operate in their cities.

Major industries in the Los Angeles region say they have already made great strides in reducing their pollution.

“What’s frustrating for these businesses is to do so much for 50 years and reduce the risk to a fraction of what it is in the rest of the country and we still have this kind of testimony from the environmental community,” Wyman said.

Cleaning up toxic air pollutants has been a thorny issue at the AQMD for years. In 1994, the board rejected a cancer limit proposed by its staff and stunned environmentalists by choosing instead to adopt a standard drafted by oil companies and other major manufacturers. Some of those same companies, including Northrop-Grumman and Chevron, led the opposition to the new measure.

In addition to cancer risk, the new rule puts limits on the allowable risk of other serious medical conditions, such as respiratory diseases, birth defects and neurological damage, created by industrial chemicals.

Environmentalists and the AQMD were also at odds over the granting of deadline extensions.

Industrial plants within 1,000 feet of schools and those with the highest risk levels have three years to comply. Others will have until 2005. But the AQMD will allow numerous extensions.

A company would qualify for a two-year extension if its cost exceeded $4 million for each cancer case avoided. Companies also can win extensions if there is no technology commercially available to meet the new limits. Environmentalists opposed the cost exemption and favored a one-time, two-year extension for technology issues.

Some companies say they don’t know how they will comply. Millie Yamada of Northrop-Grumman in El Segundo said Friday that the company has already installed efficient pollution filters to reduce emissions of chromium, a cancer-causing chemical used to coat aircraft parts to prevent corrosion. Further reductions would be difficult, she said.

Eight large industries, including aerospace and dry cleaners, are exempt because the AQMD plans to consider specific rules for them over the next three years. As many as 7,000 additional companies could be forced to reduce toxic emissions under those measures.

Two AQMD board members--Newport Beach City Councilwoman Norma Glover and Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson--said they voted against the more stringent staff proposal because they worried that it would be a precedent for smaller businesses, such as dry cleaners, that cannot afford to comply. Dry cleaning companies said that if they face a standard similar to the one adopted Friday they will be driven out of business.

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Cancer Threats

Twenty-two industrial plants in the Los Angeles Basin, according to preliminary estimates, pose a cancer threat to nearby residential areas that exceeds a new limit adopted by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The new measure requires each company to limit the health risk it creates to 25 cancer cases among every 1 million residents exposed for a lifetime.

*--*

Risk of cancer

cases per

Company Location million people*

Valley--Todeco Inc. Sylmar 388

Equilon Enterprises Wilmington 186

BKK Corp., Landfill Division West Covina 180

Kwikset Corp. Anaheim 150

Embee Inc. Santa Ana 120

Senior Flexonics Inc. Burbank 113

Equilon Wilmington 100

Consolidated Film Industries Hollywood 92