City’s air fails quality check

BURBANK — Officials are breathing a sigh of discontent after a January South Coast Air Quality Management District report showed Burbank’s air quality is one of the worst in Southern California.

The report — in which residents are encouraged to give their input for another month — shows that Burbank’s air quality, mostly owing to its proximity to some of the busiest freeways in California, is well above average levels of toxicity and second only to Fontana in San Bernardino County.

Residents now have until April 4 to submit comments on the report.

“It’s not good news,” City Manager Mary Alvord said. “But our city has two freeways going through it and we’re part of a regional plan that moves people through Los Angeles.”

The air quality district conducted its study over two years at 10 sites throughout Southern California, including a Burbank location, downtown Los Angeles, Wilmington and parts of Long Beach.

From April 2004 to March 2006, they collected more than 18,000 air samples and performed about 36,500 analyses on the samples, according to the agency’s Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study III.

The study found that high levels of toxicity in Burbank from diesel engines, most likely from trucks rumbling through Burbank on the Golden State (5) Freeway are the culprit, but pollution from Bob Hope Airport also plays a part, air quality district spokesman Sam Atwood said.

“The 5 Freeway carries a lot of truck traffic,” he said. “Those trucks emit diesel exhaust, which causes cancer and accounts for 80% of risk. But there would also be some contribution from the airport.”

Officials at Bob Hope Airport have taken steps to reduce emissions but are resigned to the fact that pollution from airplanes is out of their hands.

The airport has replaced its shuttle bus fleets, which run from the parking lots to the terminals, with cleaner-burning vehicles that run on low sulfur fuel that have cut emissions by 96%, and has launched an electric charging system to get airlines to convert from diesel to electric equipment used for hauling baggage and towing planes into parking positions, airport spokesman Victor Gill said.