Air Quality Issues in the Beverly Hills High School Area, Beverly Hills, CA
Overview
This is a litigation case in which the plaintiffs claim that local industrial emission in Beverly Hills, CA have impacted the area surrounding Beverly Hills High School (BHHS) and caused chronic exposure and consequent adverse health effects on the student population. Industrial emissions include drill sites and Central Plants boilers and cooling towers. The chemical of concern include benzene, formaldehyde, chromium VI, PAHs, PCBs, and dioxins/furans..
We present a map (Figure 1) and an animation (Video 1) of the area.
EnviroComp's Role
We were retained by the attorneys representing the defendants in this case. Our work included examination and review of the reports and opinions by the experts designated by the plaintiffs; a meteorological study of the winds in the Western Los Angeles Basin; the examination of the tracer data obtained from a two-month tracer experiment conducted in the area; and use of a tracer-based dispersion model to simulate the annual average concentrations around the BHHS over multi-year periods for each representative plaintiff.
Our results show that the concentrations on BHHS caused by the emissions from the defendants' facilities are practically negligible. For benzene, for example, the impact is on the order of 1 ppt (=0.001 ppb), which is roughly one thousand times lower than the current background concentrations of benzene in the Los Angeles area. Our full technical report is available here.
Visuals
