(Slightly edited for space. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Cross-posted from Open Left

Yesterday, January 4, 2008, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) released a landmark study of air pollution and cancer risk, four years in the making, showing significant improvements over an earlier study in the late 1990s, but an overall level of risk that is hundreds to thousands of times higher than what’s normally considered acceptable. The AQMD is the regional air quality enforcement agency for the Los Angeles/Orange County/Inland Empire area, home to the worst air pollution in the country.  The study, known as  MATES III (Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study), tracked 33 substances, with over 18,000 samples taken at 15 sites over a two-year period.

The vast majority of cancer risk–85%–came from diesel particulate matter, which is primarily regulated by the federal government.  The role of the executive branch in promoting, preventing or delaying effective action is but one more life-or-death decision affecting millions of people in the upcoing November election.

Homicides In California
Year	# of Homicides
2002	2,395
2003	2,407
2004	2,392
2005	2,503
2006	2,485

AQMD found the average cancer risk to be 1,200 per million–two to three orders of magnitude above the the level of just 1 to 10 per million that most health experts would consider acceptable, according to AQMD Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein.  But the cancer risk at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are more than double that–up to 2,900 per million, and the next highest levels of risk are found along the goods movement corridors moving inland from the ports:

In 2006, California’s state-level agency, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released a study (“Emission Reduction Plan for Ports and Goods Movement”) estimating that total premature deaths due to trade (aka “goods movement”) in California from all causes (not just cancer) is about 2,400 annually.  This is roughly equal to the number of murder victims in California in recent years:

Murders are reported on the news every day.  “If it bleeds, it leads.”  But those killed by trade?  Even the doctors and nurses who attend their deaths don’t know who they are.  How can you tell that this particular victim of cancer or heart atack died because of goods movement air pollution?  You can’t.  But they’re out there.  Invisible victims.  Dying, every day.  

It’s not all bad news.  MATES III shows that AQMD’s air pollution programs have reduced residents’ cancer risk from toxic air pollution by at least 15 percent in the past seven years.  But the federal government, not the AQMD, has direct authority over the major contributors to goods movement pollution–ships, planes, trains, and trucks.  And the federal government, of course, is not just doing nothing, it’s actively preventing others from doing anything.

In a press release, AQMD said:

“This reduction in cancer risk shows that we are on the right track in tackling toxic air pollution,” said William Burke, Ed.D., Governing Board Chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“However, the remaining cancer risk is completely unacceptable.  Thousands of residents are getting sick and dying from toxic air pollution.  Some of them live in low-income, minority neighborhoods that may be heavily impacted by cancer-causing air pollution.  We must continue to fight for cleaner ships, locomotives, trucks and other sources of toxic air pollution to improve the  health of all Southern California residents.”

According to AQMD, the chief findings of MATES III are that:

* On average, Southland residents are exposed to a lifetime cancer risk from toxic air pollution of 1,200 in 1 million.  That is a 15 percent reduction from the average risk estimated in AQMD’s last air toxics study conducted in 1998-1999, but still one of the highest risks in the country;

* The highest computer-modeled risk level is in the port area with a maximum lifetime cancer risk of up to 2,900 in a million;

* Diesel exhaust accounts for approximately 84 percent of region-wide cancer risk and mobile sources — including cars and trucks as well as ships, trains, aircraft and construction equipment — account for 94 percent of the total risk; and

* Sites with higher levels of cancer risk due to air toxics include Burbank, downtown Los Angeles, Fontana, Huntington Park and Wilmington.  The site with the lowest risk is Anaheim.

The following chart shows the dominant role played by diesel particulate matter (bottom red-orange portion of each bar):

The last MATES study lead to a series of regulatory measures, and we should expect more of the same in the wake of MATES III, although the most significant actions will require federal action–or, at the very least, non-interefence.  Of these, AQMD highlighted the following:

* AQMD’s clean fleet rules, which have resulted in the purchase of hundreds of clean-fueled transit buses, school buses, refuse trucks, street sweepers and other vehicles;

* Regulations that have significantly reduced emissions of perchloroethylene (“perc”) at dry cleaners and other industries; hexavalent chromium from metal plating shops and protected schools from toxic air pollutants from new sources;

* Collaboration with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to establish the ports’ Clean Air Action Plan, a landmark program to cut diesel emissions from ships, trucks, trains and other sources;

* Use of well over $100 million in incentive funds to reduce diesel emissions from school buses, tug boats and trucks in the ports and other sources of diesel exhaust; and

* Adoption in January 2007 of AQMD’s Mobile Source Fair Share Initiative, which led to introduction of the Marine Vessel Emissions Reduction Act in Congress last year.  If approved, the measure would compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce toxic and smog-forming pollution from ships.

In addition to direct federal action, there are solid legal grounds to allow greater flexibility for others to act–if the Bush Administration were sympathetic to public health.  There are solid legal arguments supporting jurisdictional rights for some state and regional programs–as well as actions by the ports themselves, which have the right to set terms for those doing business with them, under what’s known as the “market participation theory”.

But industry threats of lawsuits have already delayed implementation of a clean trucks program. The federal government can further delay such efforts through its opposition, as demonstrated by the EPA’s recent refusal of a Clean Air Act waiver for California’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions for cars.  Thus, MATES III also serves to highlight another way in which the elections this November could well save thousands of innocent lives.