Daily News of Los Angeles
By Kerry Cavanaugh
Sep 05, 2004
After earlier air quality tests near Bradley Landfill turned up nothing unusual, pollution officials are broadening their investigation and analyzing Sun Valley as a potential ``hot spot'' of toxic air contamination.
For three months this fall and winter, investigators will install equipment at a local school and test for about 30 cancer-causing air contaminants, including diesel exhaust and vinyl chloride from landfills. They'll also take measurements near potential pollution sources, such as gas stations, dry cleaners and chrome platers.``There is the perception that there is something going on in Sun Valley that, literally, doesn't smell right,'' said Francisco Martinez, legislative deputy to Councilman Tony Cardenas, who represents the area. ``This will provide us, really for the first time ever, a clear and honest scientific picture of what is going on in Sun Valley.''
Sun Valley is one of a dozen communities getting extra scrutiny as part of the South Coast Air Quality Management District's larger study of toxic air contamination through the Los Angeles region and Inland Empire.
Two similar studies completed in 1987 and 1999 discovered diesel exhaust is responsible for 70 percent of cancer risk from air pollution in the region. They also found the dry cleaning solvent perchloroethylene was prevalent in air quality samples and that spurred the AQMD to phase out the potent chemical.
Sun Valley was chosen for the extra analysis because of community concerns over high asthma rates and the concentration of waste and industrial companies.
Community activists have been pushing for intensive air quality monitoring to prove their assertion that residents are being exposed to unhealthy pollution from Bradley Landfill and nearby industrial businesses.
``We feel that one of the best ways to combat the problems we're having is to have very hard, very specific data that can't be shut out,'' said Maria Sesma Sooy, an outreach consultant to Fernangeles Elementary School and a member of community organizing group One LA.
Chamber of Commerce President and Waste Management Public Affairs Director Lily Lee said local businesses also look forward to the study results. Hard data would help the chamber in ``doing what we can to reduce those nuisance issues, if they are in fact from our business members.''
Community concern prompted the AQMD to test air quality downwind of Bradley Landfill for dust and two toxic contaminants. They found normal levels of toxic contaminants and slightly higher levels of dust that investigators later attributed to construction at the Valley Generating Station power plant where the monitor was located.
In 1998, Pacoima, a few miles north of Sun Valley, was chosen as a hot spot that warranted extra scrutiny for toxic contamination. But investigators found the air quality in Pacoima was normal for the region and wasn't much different than air monitored in Burbank.