LA is Toxic, and We Need to Talk About it

The asbestos, my friends, is blowing in the wind

Like most Los Angeles residents, I’ve been mainlining local news for the last week, bracing for breaking news and fire updates, trying to figure out how bad things are, how much worse they could get, and when to expect them to get better. California is no stranger to wildfires, but this is more than one fire, and it’s not just wilderness that’s burning - it’s homes, businesses, cars, neighborhoods. And when these structures burn, they release all sorts of toxic chemical compounds. These are known as wildland urban interface fires. According to FEMA, the WUI area in the US is growing by approximately 2 million acres per year - so even if you’re not in Southern California, take note. This concerns you, too.

The LA fires are unprecedented in their scope and destruction, so it’s hard to use historical examples to gauge how bad things are or what kind of health outcomes to fear.

The best comparison I can think of - and one I haven’t seen anyone make yet - is 9/11. Which was only two buildings. Two very large buildings, but two buildings nonetheless.

More people have died from exposure to toxic pollutants in the air after 9/11 than died in 9/11.

And that number keeps growing.

From the New York Times in 2021:

By some estimates, more than 400,000 people in Lower Manhattan, including those who lived, worked and studied there, were exposed to toxic material from the pulverized towers, leading to health issues that were diagnosed many years later.

Of the 111,005 ground zero responders and survivors enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, 4,610 have died, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the program does not collect information on cause of death, some health officials believe many died from Sept. 11-related illnesses — and that the toll is in fact higher, given the likelihood that many people have died who were not enrolled in the program and did not know their illness was Sept. 11-related.

Most responders have registered for federal medical coverage and settlements. But only a small fraction of civilians affected by the toxins have done so. Many are unaware that they are able to, or even that the illnesses they are suddenly experiencing years after 2001 may be a result of the lethal dust and smoke of the smoldering rubble where the towers stood.

The city of New York likely knew the air was more toxic than it admitted. But to admit the toxicity would have upended the entire city. Might have led anyone living or working or going to school in lower Manhattan to question the safety of continuing to do so. Might have disrupted the country’s financial center from getting back to work.

So maybe it’s no surprise that Karen Bass and other officials haven’t emphasized air toxicity as a concern in any of the recent We’re-here-to-reassure-the-public press conferences.

This past fall - on the 23rd anniversary of the attacks - New York City Council introduced a transparency bill attempting to find out what city officials knew and when about the toxins in the air after 9/11. There have been previous lawsuits and FOIA requests - all of which have been denied.

How long was New York toxic? There’s limited data, but the answer is clearly months, judging by the eligibility criteria for 9/11 federal health programs: anyone who spent time within a 1.5 mile radius of the World Trade Center between 9/11 and mid-2002 is eligible to apply.

In 2018, the CDC released an inventory of hazardous 9/11 agents compiled by the World Trade Center Health Program. The list of chemical agents is 19 pages long. It includes 352 chemical compounds.

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This weekend, I watched an interview with a fire department official conducted on the patio of a house on Westridge Road - the eastern front of the Palisades Fire - where firefighters were siphoning water from backyard pools to fight the flames. Smoke in the background as the reporter asked: “When will it be safe for residents to come back to their homes?”

An absurd question given the active fire in the background, but it’s one I’ve heard echoed in interview after interview, and at every press conference.

The answers involve variations of: It’s not safe yet because there are still smoldering fires, uncontrolled flames, downed power lines, incoming winds. We know you want to get back to your homes, and we will let you know as soon as it’s safe to do so, as soon as the fire is contained.

What few people are saying?

The air, the debris, the homes that are left standing: toxic. Extremely toxic. And it’s going to be toxic for months. Los Angeles’s air - and likely water supply - is more toxic than we know. And it’s not just the houses that have burned down. It’s not just the surviving house on ravaged blocks. It’s neighborhoods miles away from the fire zones, too.

There’s much discussion of air quality as measured by AQI, but AQI doesn’t account for everything. It measures the quantity of PM 2.5 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, which can penetrate the lungs and bloodstream) but not what specific compounds make up that matter. Some things are toxic to breathe only beyond a certain quantity, others are toxic at any levels. This includes many chemicals released by the fires, by scorched buildings and cars. Tiny particles that can slip into your lungs and bloodstream and cause health problems anywhere from right away to decades down the line. How many chemical compounds and which ones? No way of knowing yet, but we shouldn’t wait for a 20-page CDC report to be published in 2043.

When the wind kicks up - as it is expected to do this week, as it did for much of last week - it can blow ash over a distance of I can’t figure out how many miles but I’m guessing 50 mph winds can carry things pretty far. What’s more: Toxic ash and dust that has settled on the ground can be blown back up into the wind months after the fact. It’s not just visible ash that’s a problem. It’s impossible to see asbestos in the air.

Wearing a mask is a start, but it’s not enough. And we need to be warning people about this, loudly and repeatedly. Particularly the people who are so eager to get back to see the remains of their homes. This needs to be a subject at every press conference and a regular topic on the local news, and it hasn’t been.

Other things I’ve watched recently:

• an interview with a Malibu couple whose house miraculously survived the fire - the only one on their block. They are traumatized and grateful and said they hope that power and services will be restored to their home soon because they’d like to move back in.

• a local news segment in which a reporter met a woman on the street who wanted to get back to her house in the Palisades to save a diamond ring from a recently deceased aunt but couldn’t due to long lines of people trying to do the same and limited numbers of police escorts. The reporter promised to help out if she saw the house, which she later did; it was still standing on a street full of charred lots. The reporter took video as she walked through the unlocked house, announcing that everything smelled like smoke. She couldn’t find the diamond, but she did find the medicine cabinet, from which she retrieved some medicine for the woman’s mother-in-law and brought it back down for them.

• A TikTok video of a young woman in flip flops giving a gallows’ humor “house tour” of her burned down home, picking an orange from a miraculously surviving tree, peeling and eating it at a stone table in the middle of the rubble.

• A TikTok video of a woman climbing through her home’s rubble to discover a single intact item: a Stanley cup.

None of these people should be spending time in these homes, and many of the contents inside may be unsafe.

To give credit where it’s due: the city of Pasadena has released an Ash Exposure Prevention Guide, though I had to go searching online to find it. I’ve heard no talk on local news, which I’ve been mainlining for the past week.

People visiting the remains of their homes or trying to clean up ash need to wear high quality respirators - at least an N95, but ideally a P100 - and goggles and have all skin fully covered. Clothing and shoes exposed to ash should be changed immediately (and discarded or washed, but not using chemical agents) You shouldn’t sweep or dust ash off surfaces, as that will send particles up into the air, nor should you use chemical agents while cleaning. Children and pets should be kept away.

But if you’re not at the site of a burned home, if you’re a few miles from the fires, say, how can you know whether ash particles have traveled your way?

You can’t. That’s part of the danger.

The USDA has warned that wildfires can render food in homes relatively far from the fires unsafe to eat:

These particles can travel far on air currents, and harm residents miles away. They can infiltrate common food packaging, including plastic wrap, cardboard boxes, and screw-cap containers. Once contaminated, food cannot be decontaminated, posing risks to human health.

The Los Angeles Department of Public Health advises discarding plastic water bottles covered in ash, as particles can contaminate caps. Food exposed to ash and not stored in waterproof or airtight containers should also be thrown out, while sealed glass or metal jars can be cleaned and used.

What’s more: extreme temperatures can compromise the seals of cans and jars, allowing bacteria to get in, and it can also activate dormant pathogens.

Wildfire smoke can also be a vehicle for bacteria and fungi, carrying it across great distances and spreading heat-tolerant microbes to food. Meaning: you can’t get rid of the microbes by heating it.

Similarly: you can’t purify water contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by heating/boiling it. On the contrary: the heat often releases toxic chemicals. What began as a “boil water” advisory in Palisades zip code 90272 has become a “do not drink” water advisory. Residents - who shouldn’t be there in the first place, because the entire zip code has been under evacuation orders since last week - have now been warned that boiling, bathing, and drying their clothes and dishes using tap water is all dangerous.

Contaminants enter the water system when there are water pressure drops and/or melted pipes. As anyone who’s been following the story knows, water pressure problems have played a major role in hindering firefighting efforts across the city.

But are these contaminants really only in the 90272 water supply? I don’t know enough about the water supply and distribution systems, but I have a hard time believing that they are so thoroughly separated by zip code.

Experts haven’t confirmed VOC contamination in specific water supplies - but that’s just because it’s too early to perform extensive testing.

Just because your neighborhood hasn’t received a water warning doesn’t necessarily mean it's safe. Though if your neighborhood has received a warning - as is the case in the Palisades and the Altadena and Pasadena area - it definitely isn’t safe and likely won’t be for a while.

As reported by WIRED:

For parts of Los Angeles County served by LADWP, McCurry [associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC] estimates this recovery could take anywhere from a few days to weeks.

Altadena and the surrounding regions, however, are serviced by multiple smaller water providers, like the Lincoln Avenue Water Company, Las Flores Water Company, Rubio Canon Land and Water Association, and Kinneloa Irrigation District—all of which have issued Do Not Drink notices. “In the case of a large water system like LADWP, you’ll probably see things resume a little bit faster,” says Kearns. “For smaller water providers, which can sometimes have just a couple of employees and not have the budgets for these kinds of events, they may have some struggles.” Santa Cruz experienced similar challenges during the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in 2020, with the water service taking months to stabilize. McCurry warns that some regions may require years to build from scratch or overhaul large systems that have burned…

Before lifting advisories, water providers are legally required by the State of California to monitor for benzene. However, Whelton cautions that benzene isn’t the only chemical of concern and the list of potential contaminants is long. Both government and third-party testing services do not always account for every possible exposure. “It’s possible that some of those chemicals could linger for longer than water providers expect,” echoes McCurry.

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…how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?

I want to say: listen to and trust what the Los Angeles officials are saying. They know best. They will protect us.

But I’m haunted by memories of early pandemic, when we were told masks weren’t necessary. I’m reminded of the accidental emergency evacuation warnings that have been going out - like the one a few days ago that was mistakenly sent to the entire LA county region. The outdoor press conferences at which none of the officials and speakers are themselves wearing masks. The initial “boil water” advisory, in light of what I know now about the dangers of boiling contaminated water. The pressure to calm the public and keep the city from breaking out into the kind of chaos and panic that might ensue if people all over the city suddenly felt unsafe in their homes, showers, grocery stores.

In 2016, the former EPA chief, Christine Todd Whitman, apologized for telling the people of New York that the air and water were safe so soon after the attacks. “We did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had,” Whitman told The Guardian. At the time, she warned people working at Ground Zero to wear respirators but said nothing about dangers to people living in the surrounding area.

We can no longer claim ignorance about the dangers of certain chemicals in the air, as NY officials did after 9/11.

I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to keep information from Los Angeles residents. The problem is a lack of information, at this point. It takes time and resources to collect data and conduct extensive testing. But we know enough to know we shouldn’t wait for hard data to take precautions.

This is news nobody wants to hear or deliver. We want to hear: the city will recover quickly. We will rebuild. We’ll help cut through the red tape. We’re Angelenos, we’re resilient, we will get you back in your homes. That’s the message delivered at every press conference. But in the long run, we’d be better off assuming the worst than the best, and taking precautions accordingly. It would be a public health disaster to do otherwise - especially for members of high-risk groups: children, the elderly, immunocompromised people or those with respiratory conditions.

In the short run, this will mean massive protracted upheaval at great expense, and I don’t purport to know what to do or how to do it. All I know - from spending my weekend buried in post-9/11 data - is that the long term costs of underemphasizing the risks are extraordinarily high. How high?

The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

For now: stay inside, stay masked, stay as safe as you can.