SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — Southern California air quality regulators announced a major study Thursday focusing on the San Bernardino rail yard, a national trade gateway that has been found to pose the greatest health risk of any rail yard in the state.
The two-year Loma Linda University study on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail yard will cost an estimated $846,000 to be funded by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
The study will include reporting on environmental health risks, and surveys of respiratory diseases and health issues among children and adults. Researchers are hoping to determine if there is a higher asthma and fatal cancer rate in the surrounding community.
John Froines, an environmental health sciences professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, will participate in this new study and has been completing a separate two-year study with a colleague looking at toxic air pollutants from rail yards in Long Beach, Commerce and San Bernardino. While many studies have looked at the effects of rail yards on the health of workers, Froines said few have looked at the effect on the surrounding communities.
"This is very important because if you think of a road map and you think of a process that starts, say upstream, and goes downstream to the actual diseases, what we're doing is defining that road map," he said, adding that the studies will show a link between the pollution and its effects on human health.
The study was prompted by a 2008 report by the California Air Resources Board that found the San Bernardino rail yard topped the state in terms of health risks to the surrounding community. That report found that more than 1.8 million Californians are at risk of cancer from rail yard pollution, but critics have dismissed it as a theory that's not based in real data.
Lena Kent, BNSF spokeswoman for the region including California, did not immediately return a call or e-mail Thursday.
Mary Diaz, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma four years ago, believes she is an example of how residing less than a block from a rail yard for 26 years can erode someone's health.
The trains are so close that noise from passing locomotives rattles her house at night, frightening her grandchildren. Diesel trucks squeeze through the street past her house multiple times a day on their way to the rail yard. She has to keeps her windows shut and the air conditioning on so the smell of oil or burning steel that wafts through the neighborhood doesn't fill her house.
"I've thought a lot about that odor and the exhaust and fumes of the trucks that go by," she said, adding that she can't afford to move. "A lot of people in this area have had cancer, they have asthma. A lot of people around here don't have a lot of money and they're Spanish speaking, and I don't think they understand what's going on."
As she spoke, a truck full of empty palates drove by, passing inches from her mailbox. Her neighborhood is filled with small single-story homes surrounded by chain-link fences, cracked sidewalks and trash strewn in the streets where children played basketball.
"I really want something to be done, especially for the little kids that are growing up," Diaz continued. "I don't want anyone to go through what I've been through."
Since the 1990s, San Bernardino has emerged as a transportation hub for the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex. Millions of cargo containers on trucks and trains travel by freeway and railway through Southern California to the rail yard, where they depart to the rest of the country.
Diesel exhaust contains tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs, carrying with it a variety of toxins that have been linked to acute bronchitis, lung disease, heart attacks and other ailments. Exposure to this smog is especially dangerous for children whose lungs are still developing and the elderly, whose immune systems may be compromised.
State regulators issued guidelines recommending against building new schools and homes within a mile of a rail yard. In 2003, the Legislature passed a law requiring that a school district verify that any rail yard within a quarter mile of a new school will not present a public health threat.
David Petit, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, praised the study. The NRDC intervened in a lawsuit involving the local air regulator that was struck down by a federal appeals court last year. The air quality management district wanted to reduce pollution from idling locomotives trains, but the court determined the agency was overstepping its authority because only the federal government is tasked with regulating interstate commerce.
"There are measures in the market right now that the rail yards can use to fix or minimize the problems," he said, adding that rail yards can use newer cleaner locomotives and limit idling. "The issue has been that all of that costs money and the rail yards have not wanted to pay that cost to clean up its activities."