Toxic Wastes in Bay of Little Direct Harm to Humans, Port Panel Finds

The San Diego Unified Port District’s toxic waste advisory committee said Friday that the levels of copper, radiation and PCBs--toxic, man-made fluids--found in San Diego Bay pose a negligible hazard and are of “relatively little concern” to human beings.

Such findings were released from a yet-to-be-completed study being conducted by the advisory committee, which was established by the port commissioners in March to evaluate pollution in the bay.

The committee’s final report, expected to be completed within three months, will make recommendations on how the port can curtail contamination in the bay, said Richard Burt, the committee’s co-chairman.

Although the chemical and physical agents studied cause no “direct” harm to human beings, such pollutants apparently contaminate marine life, said Dr. Harold Simon, who heads the task force’s cleanup subcommittee. Simon, an international health policy professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, has written extensively about several health policy topics, including infection and infectious diseases.

Alan Sakarias, conservation committee chairman of the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, questioned the value of the report’s results.

“This report is not telling me anything new,” Sakarias said. “I don’t think anybody thinks that if you stand out at Seaport Village you’ll keel over from breathing in the fumes from the bay. The bay’s not that polluted.

“What I want to know is what will happen to all those people who work in and near the bay, like divers, and what will happen to the people who eat the fish? What’s going to happen down the road? Those are the real questions that need to be answered.”

Such concerns are being studied and will be addressed in the final report, Simon said.

Recently, fish with deformed gills and tumors have been found in the bay, Simon confirmed, and he too expressed concern that people who eat fish caught there may be at risk of illness.

The committee is planning to evaluate workers, such as divers, who spend considerable time in the bay, as well as people who eat fish from it, Simon said. Such studies should help determine the effects of long-term, regular contact with the bay water and possible links between illness and digestion of contaminated fish, he said.

Studies on biological pollutants in the bay, such as bacteria and viruses--which researchers believe pose a far greater threat to humans--are also incomplete, Simon said.

“By no means is the bay pristine, but there is relatively little concern about the agents we have studied so far,” he said. They would not cause harm to humans “even if you breathe it, drink it or put it on your skin.”

The committee reached its conclusion after reviewing measurements taken by several researchers, including those at the state regional Water Quality Control Board, San Diego State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Navy.

The 21-member toxic waste advisory committee is composed of environmentalists, business people, water pollution regulators and scientists, and also includes representatives from SDSU’s Center for Marine Studies and Scripps.

The committee was established in response to the water quality board’s ruling in February that the Port District was just as responsible for a case of copper pollution in the bay as the company that mishandled the metal concentrate during storage and loading between 1985 and 1986 at the 24th Street Marine Terminal in National City.

The discharge of copper ore into the bay prompted the committee to focus its initial studies on the metal concentrate. The copper, however, has settled into the sediment and does not directly threaten humans, the study found.

“We think it’s better to leave it as is rather than try to remove it,” Simon said. “Stirring up the sediment will cause more harm than good.”

Levels in the bay waters of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, and tributylin, a highly effective biocide used in marine paints to keep algae and barnacles off boat bottoms, were also deemed unharmful.

Simon also said there are “no detectable levels of radiation” in the bay. However, the committee plans to conduct its own radiation tests because those measurements were provided by the Navy--the primary source for radiation contamination in the bay.