(The following story by Andrew Edwards appeared on the San Bernardino County Sun website on April 29.)
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A state air-quality official said a recently released study shows surprising levels of air pollution-related cancer risks around the BNSF Railway yard in San Bernardino.
“It was a very unique conclusion. We did not expect to see those levels,” said Harold Holmes Jr., engineering evaluation manager for the California Air Resources Board.
“San Bernardino is unique because it has a whole bunch emission sources in one place,” Holmes noted.
Lena Kent, a BNSF spokeswoman, said the rail company has agreed to work with state regulators to study emissions around rail yards.
She said the firm is planning to reduce air pollution by buying cleaner equipment. She also contended that the study overstated cancer dangers related to living near a rail yard.
The San Bernardino BNSF complex takes up about 168 acres on the Westside. There are some residences within 1,000 feet of the rail yard, according to ARB’s study.
A draft of the San Bernardino study, called a Health Risk Assessment, is dated April 16. A similar study for BNSF’s 600-acre rail yard in Barstow, dated the same day, concluded that the desert complex generated more pollution than the San Bernardino yard but did not present as many health risks.
The studies relied heavily on estimates of diesel pollution generated during 2005.
Researchers estimated that locomotives and other emissions sources, such as heavy trucks, generated 33 tons of diesel pollutants within one mile of the San Bernardino rail yard in 2005.
In Barstow, where the rail yard lies northwest of the city, trains and other pollution sources within a one-mile zone around the yard coughed up an estimated 54 tons of diesel pollution.
The study measured cancer dangers in terms of risks per million people. Holmes said the background risk – the cancer danger that comes from living in a given area – is 1,000 per million people within the South Coast Air Basin of Southern California.
In San Bernardino, researchers calculated that cancer risks around the rail yard jumped above that background level by 500 chances or more per million for about 3,800 people who live on 430 acres near the rail yard boundaries.
“From an air-pollution perspective, it is extremely high,” Holmes said.
In Barstow, rail yard-related diesel emissions increased the cancer risk by 250 or more people in a million in the area most affected by the desert complex.
The background risk of cancer in the Mojave Desert Air Basin is lower than in metropolitan Southern California. In the desert, the background danger is 120 cancer cases among one million people.
Cancer risks dropped off in areas that were further and further from the rail yards.
Researchers’ calculations of cancer risks were based on assumptions of how likely someone might be to fall ill with cancer if exposed to diesel emissions over a 70-year period.
“It’s a mathematical formula that assumes a worst-case scenario,” Kent argued.
She said BNSF and Union Pacific, which has a rail yard in Colton, will spend a combined $300 million between 2000 and 2010 on technology to reduce diesel emissions.
For example, she said 99 percent of the about 170 locomotives used to haul freight within California have been outfitted with equipment to prevent them from unnecessary idling.
Public meetings are scheduled to be held next week in San Bernardino and Barstow to discuss the studies and pollution-reduction efforts.
The Barstow meeting is scheduled from 6:30 to 9 p.m. May 7 at City Hall, 220 East Mountain View.
The San Bernardino meeting is scheduled from 6:30 to 9 p.m. May 8 at City Hall, 300 N. D St.