West Berkeley's Air Quality: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
L A Wood, Berkeley Daily Planet August 28, 2007 |
The lyrics “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” have certainly been true in West Berkeley where foundry emissions and their noxious odors are a daily reminder of our local air quality crisis. Current levels of airborne chemicals and metal particulates have given zip code 94710 the shameful distinction of having some of the highest levels of asthma in the county.
Although West Berkeley is located at the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay, it has much poorer air quality than is found in larger California cities such as San Jose or even San Francisco. Despite numerous local advocacy groups, and even several lawsuits, this environmental outrage has only grown. The shocking truth is that today’s residents of the Oceanview district know little more about the health impacts from these industrial emissions than locals knew a quarter of a century ago.
The deepening concern over these persistent toxic emissions has residents and workers in our community pointing blame at the area’s number one polluter, Pacific Steel Casting. Other citizens identify this problem with our inept regional air authority, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and still others with the City of Berkeley’s failed zoning practices that have allowed housing and offices to be located in close proximity to the steel foundry.
Although all these entities are culpable, it is clearly the air district that bears the most responsibility. For decades, BAAQMD has fostered a regulatory climate in West Berkeley of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and in doing so, has perpetuated an ongoing health quandary.
Regulatory hot spot
Modern-day air regulation came into existence more than 50 years ago as did our regional air district, BAAQMD. From the very beginning, the air district’s mandate has been mired in politics, allowing industrial polluters to “regulate” themselves, and as in Berkeley, to avoid any real public review or accountability.
BAAQMD, like so many other regulatory agencies, has lost sight of its prime objective to protect the public’s health and instead has preferred to protect private industry from any substantial changes. Pacific Steel Casting, at Gilman and Second Street, is a prime example of the air district’s failure to regulate.
Proof of this lies in the fact that over the past five years PSC’s production levels have increased enormously as have their airborne contaminants such as manganese, zinc, nickel, copper, cresols, phenol, benzene and formaldehyde. Yet, these emissions continue to be poorly monitored and inadequately contained. According to the California Air Resources Board data, the emissions for of some PSC airborne pollutants (benzene, copper, cresols, phenol, and zinc) have increased by over 160 percent. PSC’s manganese and Nickel emissions increased 51.6% during this period, formaldehyde increased 127.2%, lead increased by 128.5%, total particulates by 13.7% and pm 2.5 by 11%.
Under growing public pressure, BAAQMD has only recently begun to acknowledge this issue surrounding PSC’s emissions. For those living and working near PSC, the air district’s response has come very late in the game. In answer to its critics, BAAQMD has now required PSC to update its 16-year-old Health Risk Assessment (HRA).
One can only wonder why the district took so long to determine that a new assessment was needed for the foundry. Certainly, every regulatory definition of emissions “hot spot” should have triggered this health review years ago, especially given Pacific Steel’s expanded operations, new pollution sources, and increased emissions.
Unfortunately, an updated HRA will never provide reliable answers to the many questions regarding adequate health protection of the community. The promised risk assessment, now months overdue, is tainted by the fact that it lacks any independent or impartial review. Paid for by the polluter, PSC, this “selective” investigation will only continue to justify the foundry’s polluting activities. Rarely do HRAs accomplish any more than this.
The smoking gun
Residents and workers, who have been left gasping for some regulatory relief, may now be finding this in the form of a community grant from BAAQMD. Perhaps to get some relief of its own from the public’s growing anger, the air district agreed several months ago to fund an air study centered on the foundry’s metal particulate emissions.
The district’s grant of $25,000 was awarded to Global Community Monitoring (GCM), an international environmental justice group. Despite decades of complaints and health concerns about Pacific Steel’s emissions, the West Berkeley Community Monitoring Project provides the first systematic air sampling in Oceanview.
Since May, a small team of volunteers, in conjunction with GCM, has climbed all over residential rooftops in West Berkeley, positioning portable air samplers downwind from PSC. The project has been sampling PM 10 particulate matter (10-micron diameter) for evidence of several metals common to PSC’s emission inventory.
It certainly didn’t take a giant leap of logic to hypothesize that air sampling would reveal a hefty dispersion of metals from the foundry across the Oceanview area. Most who live in that district are all too familiar with the odor plumes that waft out more than a mile from the steel mill. The monitoring team now wants to know if the particulate metals travel like the odor plumes and at what concentrations.
This unprecedented effort by GCM is now beginning to answer some of these questions and has produced some astonishing data. Although laboratory results are still preliminary, the nearly two-dozen samples processed so far have shown that concentrations of PSC’s metal contaminants were highest at locations closest to and downwind from PSC. Lower, but still excessive, levels of these contaminants have also been measured more than a half a mile from the stacks of PSC. It should be noted that the monitoring project has dispelled the long-held belief that the Highway 80 is the source of Oceanview’s airborne metal emissions.
It is not surprising that manganese and nickel are showing up in high concentrations. According to the California Air Resource Board’s data, Pacific Steel Casting is the only significant industrial source of manganese in the Oceanview area. PSC also accounts for 99 percent of all industrial nickel emissions from the more than thirty West Berkeley industrial sources that come up on CARB’s radar. A health consultant for Berkeley’s community monitoring team, Mark Chernaik, Ph.D., has stated that the levels of manganese found in a sample was 10 to 20 times higher than deemed safe by the World Health Organization. Nickel was found in a sample to be “up to 330 times the U.S. EPA reference concentration for this contaminant.”
Early indications of the GCM monitoring project suggest that BAAQMD’s assumptions about the levels of PSC’s airborne metal particulates and the dispersion of these emissions may be grossly underestimated. Perhaps the GCM project will now shift public awareness from the foundry’s noxious odors to the potential dangers produced by PSC’s metal particulate emissions that cannot be detected by sight or smell.
To find out more about the West Berkeley Community Monitoring Project, please attend a press conference being held at 11 a.m. today (Tuesday, Aug. 28) at 1340 Eighth St., which is one of the sampling locations. You will have an opportunity to view the air sampling equipment and speak with the monitoring team about the project and the lab results of the samples analyzed so far. The West Berkeley project is approximately halfway complete and is scheduled to run for several more months.
Group to Announce Results of West Berkeley Air Quality Testing
Riya Bhattacharjee, Berkeley Daily Planet August 28, 2007 |
Air monitors set up by a group of West Berkeley residents in May to detect emissions from Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) reveal high levels of toxic metals nickel and manganese.
The group, which calls itself the Berkeley Community Monitoring Team, is scheduled to present its results at a press conference at a monitoring site on Eighth Street today (Tuesday).
Pacific Steel contends that the test results are inconclusive and misleading.“The results as published by the Berkeley Community Monitoring Team ignore data that does not fit its preconceptions,” a statement issued by PSC said. “The team singles out PSC as the sole source of emissions when air samples tested are cumulative of all sources (including Highway 80) in the industrial neighborhood of West Berkeley. The air monitoring machine is not approved by the EPA, results are not verified by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and the machine has limited capability in detecting small amounts of individual metals.”
Located at 1333 Second St., PSC produces steel castings that are used in various industries. Area residents have complained for years about its noxious odors and emissions which they call a health risk.
“These are preliminary findings but one of the goals is to daylight our monitoring project and encourage other people to stand up on their roofs and put up a monitor,” said L A Wood, who is part of the team. “We went into it with some basic assumptions. Some of the prior sampling by the West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs show traces of formaldehyde and lead and this raised questions in the community. I think our results will seriously challenge Pacific Steel’s Health Risk Assessment Report and urge them to take another look at it.”
Pacific Steel presented its Health Risk Assessment report to the air district last month. The report—which is yet to be released to the public—will help determine whether the steel foundry poses a health risk to Berkeley residents.
Wood added that while the air district had supported their project, Pacific Steel had not cooperated.
“We wanted to know their times of operation but were unable to do so,” he said. “We knew it was primarily at night so we based our sampling on that assumption. One of the main indicators was the smell. Every time you talk about West Berkeley emissions, the city government has pointed to the freeway. But this has more to do with all the industries in West Berkeley than the freeway. There’s a reason why the air district gave us the money for the monitors. They know that something is wrong at the steel foundry.”
The preliminary results from the community air monitor are based on two dozen samples. The final report will be released after 100 air tests have been completed.
“These test results are even more proof that Pacific Steel must immediately stop its pollution that threatens the health of the community,” said Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. “The health of residents is more important than corporate profits.”
According to Mark Cherniak, an independent international health expert, the levels of nickel and manganese found in the samples taken near the West Berkeley steel foundry were hundreds of times higher than considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“The nearest and largest facility known to emit these metals is Pacific Steel,” said Wood.
“At the locations where monitoring found excessive levels of both manganese and nickel, these levels were found in proportions similar to PSC’s known emissions of these metals.”
Cherniak’s analysis stated: “The manganese levels at the 700 block of Gilman Street were four to five times the WHO’s guideline value for this contaminant while nickel levels at this location were 180 to 220 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reference concentration for this contaminant.”
Additionally, “Manganese levels at the 600 block of Gilman Street and the 1300 block of 3rd Street were 10 to 20 times the WHO’s guideline value for this contaminant while nickel levels at these locations were up to 330 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reference concentration for this contaminant.”
Cherniak also said that all that data from the sampling suggests that PSC was the source of these excessive levels of contaminants.
“By using a mobile monitoring station, we are for the first time getting an idea of the particular pollution coming from Pacific Steel,” Denny Larson, director of the non-profit Global Community Monitor, an organization that promotes environmental justice and human rights for communities, told the Planet.
“So far, complaints have always centered around odor. There has never been a comprehensive study of tiny particles eliminated from the foundry which people can’t smell or see. We want to put some scientifically incredible numbers to these particles so that people know how big of a health risk they can be. We are finally honing in on what is harmful.”
Nonprofit’s Data Shows Pollutants Near Foundry
Robert Balicki, Daily Californian, August 29, 2007 |
Metals linked to neurological and respiratory problems were detected up to a mile downwind of a West Berkeley steel foundry, according to preliminary data released yesterday by an environmental advocacy group.
The study by Global Community Monitor measured airborne concentrations of manganese, nickel and four other metals around Pacific Steel Casting, a 73-year-old foundry at Gilman and Second streets, using 24 samples from local rooftops. Neighbors and activists have criticized Pacific Steel for two decades for polluting the air and complained that the foundry has moved too slowly in cleaning up its emissions.
“What this data points out is that people who are living there have a very strong likelihood of being exposed to chronic levels of manganese and nickel,” said Mark Chernaik, a scientist at the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide, a nonprofit network of environmental lawyers and scientists that analyzed the data. He emphasized that the results are preliminary and merit “a more expansive study.”
Foundry spokesperson Elisabeth Jewel said the company is working to decrease emissions and installed a carbon absorption system in one of its plants last September, among other improvements. An additional filtration system will be installed by the end of the week, she said. “They are the best technology available,” Jewel said.
The study was funded by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which settled a lawsuit over emissions with Pacific Steel in May. The foundry also settled a lawsuit with Communities for a Better Environment in March. Pacific Steel has conducted its own environmental assessment, which Jewel said will be submitted to the Air District in September.
The new data cannot be easily generalized because the samples were focused in downwind areas and were measured during periods of only 24 hours, Chernaik said. Another major limiting factor in the study was the rooftop method of obtaining samples, said Denny Larson, the executive director of Global Community Monitor.
Nonetheless, the study was procedurally sound and was conducted according to standards suggested by the California Environmental Protection Agency, Chernaik said. The preliminary data suggests that the airborne metals are concentrated near the foundry. One sample a block east of San Pablo Avenue and about a mile northwest of the Berkeley campus found very low levels of manganese and no detectable nickel concentration.
According to the California Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to nickel can exacerbate asthma and exposure to manganese can lead to fatigue, worsened short-term memory and other neurological problems. The study also measured levels of lead, zinc, chromium and copper, but data show that those substances were emitted in much smaller amounts than manganese and nickel.
Larson said it is important to expand the study because these airborne metals do not leave the human system after it is absorbed. “It’s not excreted, it’s not sweated out, it doesn’t come out when you go to the bathroom,” he said. “It’s bioaccumulative.”
A final report will be released by the end of September, Larson said.
Berkeley's Pacific Steel foundry emitting toxic metals, group say
Carolyn Jones, San Francisco Chronicle August 29, 2007 |
A Berkeley steel plant continues to spew toxic levels of manganese, nickel and other metals over residential areas of West Berkeley despite the company's recent steps to reduce emissions, a community group said Tuesday.
The Berkeley Community Monitoring Team, using a $25,000 grant from the regional air district, based its conclusions on 22 air samples taken from 12 sites within one-third of a mile of the steel foundry.
Pacific Steel Casting, the nation's third-largest steel foundry and a fixture in West Berkeley for 75 years, agreed earlier this year to install filters on its smokestacks, remove plastic from its scrap supply and take other steps to reduce emissions as part of a settlement of lawsuits filed by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and an Oakland environmental group.
Pacific Steel has reported what chemicals and metals are released in its manufacturing process, but the community's test is the first look at what residents are inhaling, the group said.
According to the group's data, which span a period of three months, Pacific Steel emitted levels of manganese and nickel more than 10 times higher than what is deemed safe by the World Health Organization. Local and state regulatory agencies do not regulate emission of the metals.
Pacific Steel released almost 700 pounds of manganese and 56 pounds of nickel in 2005, according to figures the foundry gave the air district.
Manganese, a metal found in trace amounts in drinking water and many foods, is safe in small amounts. But high levels of manganese can cause slow and clumsy body movements, poor balance, respiratory problems and sexual dysfunction. High levels of nickel can cause chronic bronchitis and lung problems.
A Pacific Steel spokeswoman said the community group's data is inconclusive and misleading because it's impossible to isolate the steel plant's emissions from other pollution sources in the neighborhood, such as Interstate 80, an asphalt factory and other nearby industries. Pacific Steel is at 1421 Second St., near Gilman Street.
"It's very difficult to point the finger solely at Pacific Steel," company spokeswoman Elisabeth Jewel said.
Pacific Steel is working hard to comply with air district pollution standards, she said. The company recently installed a new filter on the smokestack at Plant No. 1, started using a less toxic binder for mixing the steel, and added a new hood on the furnace at Plant No. 3.
