Included are several carcinogens released into the air and water – 3,807 pounds of benzene, 135 pounds of 1,3-butadiene and 606 pounds of nickel. The rest is an array of chemicals, such as toluene, hydrocyanide, ammonia, sulfuric acid and ethylbenzene, that can have respiratory or neurological effects.
Chevron has cut its total toxic air emissions from the refinery's stacks and equipment by 43 percent since 2004, according to the Toxics Release Inventory.
The company has made "significant investments in environmental controls and equipment over the past four decades,” said Melissa Ritchie, a refinery spokeswoman, in an emailed response to questions. Included are new burners that cut nitrogen oxides, a main ingredient of smog, and a 90 percent cut in emissions from a process called flaring to meet regulations adopted by the local air district.
"Our refinery has been a proud member of the Richmond community for more than 100 years, longer than the city of Richmond has been incorporated. We would like to be here for a long time to come,” she said.
But some toxic chemical releases, including benzene, lead, 1,3-butadiene, tetrachloroethylene and sulfuric acid, rose above the 2004 levels in almost every year since then.
For example, Chevron increased its air emissions of benzene, a known human carcinogen linked to leukemia in workers, to nearly two tons in 2010, up 420 pounds from 2004. In comparison, Alameda and Santa Clara counties have no industries reporting benzene.
It's not just Chevron. All five refineries near Richmond, including ConocoPhilliops and BP Richmond, reported discharging a total of 14 tons of benzene in 2010.
General Chemicals West also is a major source of emissions, including more than a ton of sulfuric acid, a chemical that can trigger respiratory problems, in 2010. Airgas Dry Ice put 16,884 pounds of corrosive ammonia into the air. Chevron's research site, Chevron Technology Center, reported more than 6,000 pounds of N-hexane and toluene, solvents that can affect the nervous system.
Topped off with freeway emissions, a commercial port and other factories along most of its 32-mile shoreline, a vortex of pollution swirls around central and North Richmond residents from all directions.
The city also is pockmarked by dozens of abandoned sites bearing the poisonous vestiges of Richmond’s past. One Superfund site, a former pesticide distributor, continues to leak the banned insecticide DDT and other chemicals into a canal draining to Richmond’s harbor, where many of the city’s Southeast Asian and black residents fish for food.
Experts say any one of these toxic exposures could be cause enough for concern. But the picture is even more dramatic for Richmond residents when researchers consider the cumulative effects of all of them.
How much their health suffers, however, is largely a mystery.
Asthma and heart disease
Neighbors of Richmond’s toxic corridor experience some health problems measurably more than people living elsewhere in the region.
“Historically there have been significant health disparities in Richmond compared to Contra Costa County,” said Kinshasa Curl, administrative chief of Richmond’s environmental division, which designed an element in the city's general plan to address environmental and health inequities.
The health gap is especially striking among low-income, non-white residents, whose homes tend to cluster around the industrial sites. “People of color in Richmond live on average ten years less than white people living in other parts of the county,” Curl said.
Richmond residents overall are at significantly higher risk of dying from heart disease and strokes, according to the Contra Costa County Health Service Department’s Community Health Indicators 2010. African-Americans have it worst of all – they are 1.5 times more likely than the county’s average to die from these diseases.
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4 Comments
Add CommentAlong the Houston Ship Channel, laced with refineries and chemical plants, lies the communities of Deer Park and Pasadena on Hwy. 225. Decades ago they were predominately white. In fact, Pasadena once had a very large KKK following.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd I am a 61 y/o white male. I and my entire extended family grew up/lived in the Lafayette section of Jersey City, NJ- a low income area that was predominately white back then, full of industry, and home now to at least 2 EPA brownfield superfund sites. The conslusion is that housing is cheaper when it's near industries. Color has nothing to do with cause/effect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf "color" has ever been an issue, it is basically because we make such a distinction to begin with! We don't want our shades of skin to become subject to our capacity for being belligerently nasty to one another, and create racism and have a segregationist attitude ? Then we should realize that we are start being racist not the moment we talk about someone's different skin color; but the moment we talk of someone being "colored", as different to not being colored. That is the actual moment we create a class separation and thus the leave a group of people "targetable" for other depreciating reasons. We don't hear ourselves, but we are being racist the moment we speak of someone being "black", or "white".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPollutants all around us either at Working Place or at residence effects our life .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccordingly,there are number of organic pollutants present all around andprovides adverse effects on Health of Human being.Health hazards are so many in different organs of body because number of chemicals are expose.