SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — San Diego County officials provided an update on the ongoing sewage issue that has plagued the South Bay for years.
At a press conference on Tuesday, San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas said there are no significant readings of hydrogen cyanide and that the county has received "no significant data" suggesting the pollution indicates a public health hazard.
"As of now, our public health officials went out there with UCSD and San Diego State at different times and this is part of an emergency cohort," Vargas said. "At this time, we’re telling our communities that it’s safe. It smells horrible, but it’s safe".
According to San Diego County, the conclusion was made after reviewing research from UC San Diego, San Diego State, and the county's hazardous incident response team.
The update comes just a few days after lead researchers Kimberly Prather of UCSD and Paula Stigler Granados of SDSU announced at a press conference with the Mayor of Imperial Beach that toxins are reaching dangerous levels in the South Bay.
Granados described what the research teams experienced with their air pollution monitors when the team arrived in the South Bay.
"Once they got there, they quickly spiked, and it saturated which means it's the highest level the meters can go to at 50 parts per million of hydrogen cyanide and they were in the ranges of 9 to 12 of hydrogen sulfite parts per million on all of these," Granados said. "At those levels, this is whenever you start to see dangerous health conditions".
In response to the county's update, Prather posted a thread on X calling out the County Supervisor for making "such a misleading statement."
Today, @SupNoraVargas held an emergency press conference claiming the air in South Bay SD is safe. Yesterday, I presented our findings at a presser showing continuous, multi-day measurements of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) well above the CARB ambient hourly standard of 30 ppb (1/8)
— Kimberly Prather, Ph.D. (@kprather88) September 10, 2024
GI problems. It’s deeply concerning that a public official trusted by the community to protect their health would make such a misleading statement based on an unverified set of measurements from an unknown location and device with no critical details (where? how long? (3/8)
— Kimberly Prather, Ph.D. (@kprather88) September 10, 2024
At the press conference, I asked the county officials about why they released contradicting results from the research. Vargas responded and said it's a collaborative effort.
"It's really important it's not them, us. We are the public healthcare agency for the County of San Diego where every day, we have experts on the ground, or doing the research or gathering the data," Vargas said. "We have collaboration and opportunities to work with other folks. We'll gather the data, we'll receive it and we'll make sure that we are giving the public information which is why we are here today".
ABC10 News received a statement from Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre with her reaction to the county's update.
“I have full confidence in the science presented by leading researchers Dr. Kim Prather, Dr. Granados, and the close to 50 researchers who have been collecting data for weeks. They will be submitting multiple articles to science journals, which undergo strict peer review. I am grateful for them, their work, and for doing the ethical and moral thing, which is to sound the alarm when people’s lives could be at risk. But most importantly, I believe the voices and heartache from my community and know that what they are experiencing and living is real.
"Their suffering should be enough to do everything in our power to ensure that there are enough sensors in the affected areas, and transparent and regular monitoring for hazardous gases, chemicals, heavy metals, pathogens, and viruses should be implemented immediately. Furthermore, this information should be shared with the public in a similar manner as the water quality testing conducted by the County’s Department of Environmental Health and Quality. We thank the researchers for choosing to study our region and present us with their findings, because we now have empirical evidence for what our communities have been having to endure for so long.”
To address the issue, the county supervisor is requesting the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the California Department of Public Health to investigate the health impacts of the cross-border pollution.
