Rubbertown Blues
One west Louisville resident complained of eye-watering noxious odors in his house. Another claimed she smelled paint-like fumes rising from her basement.
For many years residents of the area known as Rubbertown, where several chemical plants make rubber, plastics and other products, have complained about these and other airborne nuisances.
The complaints prompted area scientists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2000 and 2001 to set up air-quality monitoring stations in west Louisville and at other sites throughout the metropolitan area.
A "control" station was set up as far away as Otter Creek Park, a pastoral oasis where bluffs overlook a meandering river, forests and farmland 25 miles south of Louisville.
What scientists found surprised Russ Barnett.
"There is little industry in Meade County and yet, among other hazardous industrial compounds, we were finding 1.3 butadiene at elevated levels that could pose a health risk," says Barnett, who heads the U of L-based Kentucky Institute for the Environment and Sustainable Development (KIESD). The institute is one of several agencies supporting studies of Louisville air, the health effects of pollution and measures to reduce emissions.
Although 1,3 butadiene also is in auto exhaust, three chemical plants in west Louisville emit most of that particular cancer-causing compound in Jefferson County, according to the EPA and other data. One of them, the American Synthetic Rubber Co., accounts for 55 percent of butadiene emitted in Jefferson County, the EPA and the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control Distric report.
It is not known if the 1,3 butadiene found in Otter Creek comes from a Louisville source, but its presence shows that almost no place is free of cancer-causing pollution, Barnett says.
"What we're now seeing is that elevated levels of hazardous airborne chemicals are not only a west Louisville problem, but a community-wide concern." In parts of west Louisville butadiene was measured by the EPA in amounts hundreds of times higher than deemed safe by the agency.
According to the EPA, Jefferson County is one of the nation's 50 most-polluted counties in terms of toxic air emissions and has more air toxins than any other county in the southeast United States. In 2001, the latest year in which figures were released, 9.9 million pounds of pollutants spewed from smokestacks and other sources, ranking the county at No. 23 on the EPA's toxic release inventory.
"In all the counties in the southeast United States we have the highest health risks from air toxics," Barnett says, citing a 2002 ranking of 736 counties in eight states. "We never would have guessed that a few years ago."
Barnett says the chemicals of primary concern include the 1,3-butadiene as well as chromium, carbon tetrachloride and acrylonitrile.
In the 1990s, local scientists along with community leaders and state, local and federal agencies began to take citizens' complaints seriously.
Their concern led to the formation of a coalition in 1996 to study air quality in Louisville's Rubbertown area where 12 large chemical plants and other businesses produce plastics, rubber and other products—as well as emit tons of hazardous pollutants annually. Taking the lead was the West Jefferson County Community Task Force, a community interest group of residents industries and others.
Assisting on the scientific side was the University of Louisville.
Sniffing for Toxins
Every 12 days, John Metaxas logs 100 miles collecting and replacing specialized canisters that contain air samples from six monitoring sites—five in west Louisville and one in eastern Jefferson County.
Metaxas is coordinator of the air quality laboratory in Ernst Hall at U of L's J.B. Speed School of Engineering. He's part of the research team monitoring west Louisville's air.
He and Mark Schreck, director of the materials testing labs in Speed's chemical engineering department, play a key role by collecting and analyzing the samples for toxic content. Schreck and Metaxas have worked in chemical analysis for 35 years and 30 years, respectively.
"We're conducting ongoing monitoring using complex analytical methods," Schreck says. "We want to know what's going on in the air down there."
The EPA was involved in the project's early phase in 2000 and 2001, sampling air at 12 county locations to establish testing parameters. Ongoing sampling is supported by state funds and overseen by the West Jefferson County Community Task Force.
Using air data collected in 2000 and 2001, consultants Sciences International issued a recent report predicting that 76 to 690 more cases of cancer per million people would develop in residents of the monitored areas over an exposure period of 70 years. Such risk assessments depend on carefully collected and analyzed data.
U of L's state-of-the-art air quality facility is the only university lab in the eastern United States set up to assess environmental air toxins, Barnett says. The researchers say chemical sampling and analysis is very precise, capable of detecting gases at one part per billion in the air.
"It's complicated to take something as dilute as air and separate it into 78 different chemical compounds," Schreck says. "That's what the gas chromatograph does.
"We want to screen out things that are commonly found in the air: nitrogen, oxygen, methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor and so on," he adds.
"In the mass spectrometer, we can identify the compounds. It's like a fingerprint of the compound," Metaxas says.
"One problem of data analysis is repeatability," he adds. "We periodically compare our results with the EPA's lab, and they correlate well."
Accurate ongoing air collection and analysis is just one part of the puzzle of understanding Louisville's air and its health risks. The next steps will be to convince industries to reduce emissions and for scientists to study the health risks on actual residents.
Going into the Community
![[Image]](/advancement/pub/impact/winter2004/images/rubbertown2.jpg)
U of L pharmacology and toxicology researchers Harrell Hurst (left) and Steven Myers are developing ways to find "biomarkers," or traces of pollution exposure in the human body. (Opposite page) U of L air quality lab coordinator John Metaxas checks an air monitoring station in a wooded area by the Ohio River in west Louisville.
U of L pharmacology and toxicology professors Harrell Hurst and Steven Myers remember their first attempts to detect airborne toxins in West Louisville residents in the mid 1990s.
"We did a pilot study back in 1995 and 1996," Myers says, "and found acrylonitrile in blood protein adducts of some of the residents in west Louisville."
Adducts are products formed in the body in reaction to chemical exposure, while acrylonitrile, suspected to cause cancer, is a compound used in making acrylic fibers, plastics coatings and adhesives.
"But blood protein analysis back then was fairly crude," Myers says.
In the meantime, interest in studying west Louisville's pollution was growing. The task force was being formed and the Kentucky General Assembly gave it $150,000 a year to support various pollution studies and community education efforts.
Now, Hurst and Myers have EPA funding to renew their pollution exposure studies.
Hurst and Myers are especially interested in biomarkers—byproducts left in the body after chemical exposure.
The researchers want to measure biomarkers left by one of the most common groups of polluting compounds—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They are a major source of cancer risk and have been linked to reproductive problems and immune deficiencies.
PAHs are formed during the incomplete burning of coal, oil, gas, garbage, wood and other organic substances. Major sources include cars, diesel engines, coal-fired power plants and tobacco smoke. Often attached to dust or other airborne particles, they are typically inhaled into the body.
Hurst and Myers say that in the past most air pollution and cancer studies correlated air pollution levels with cancer statistics. By looking at actual biomarkers, however, researchers can pinpoint true cancer causes. This was difficult before because biomarker measuring was not sensitive enough to detect multiple compounds.
"It's important that we take into account lifestyle choices," says Hurst. "Someone may be exposed to industrial pollution, but they might also be a heavy smoker or use a lot of dangerous household chemicals. We have to make sure we are detecting the right culprits causing disease."
In recent years, the researchers have developed methods to measure the level of personal exposure to PAHs regardless of source.
"We're at the beginning of promising research," Hurst says. "I think our community is at the forefront in a lot of ways in bringing all the parties together to examine these problems."
Arnita Gadson agrees. She is the task force's executive director and is employed by U of L through KIESD.
![[Image]](/advancement/pub/impact/winter2004/images/rubbertown1.jpg)
U of L's Arnita Gadson says Louisville is ahead of many communities in studying industrial pollution's effects on residents.
"The risk-assessment report compiled by Sciences International on the basis of our efforts puts us ahead of many community groups across the country that are trying to tackle these pollution concerns," Gadson says.
"Accusations made by residents for many years regarding health effects from pollution have now been substantiated with the results of our risk assessment data," she adds.
"Trying to get companies to lower their emissions is the next challenge. Because the Rubbertown Industries were built prior to the present residential areas, they feel there is no environmental justice issue. But a 'We were here first' argument does not negate or lessen their acknowledgement or lack of understanding that this is an ethical, social and environmental justice issue."
Environmental justice, which emerged in the 1980s, refers to efforts by activists to lower pollution in low-income minority areas where polluting industries and residences often coexist.
With community feedback, Gadson says she is working on a new plan that will suggest ways for industry to reduce emissions and ways for residents to improve their health and tackle environmental justice issues. "Everything we're doing is because we care about the community," Gadson says. "But we don't want to hurt industry either. We don't want to see jobs lost. It's a give and take by everybody. We're all part of the community and everybody has to see it that way or we all lose."
In light of the new data, three Rubbertown plants promised Louisville Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson that they would work to reduce their emissions. Gadson says it's a good first step, but that a lot more needs to be done.
"It's a quality of life issue," she explains.
"Everyone should have the same opportunity to enjoy their home."
Though Gadson admits her sympathies are for residents, she also says her job is to facilitate interactions between all parties. Barnett concurs.
"U of L is a neutral party in all of this," he says. "We want to bring everyone together and present them with just the facts. And that's what our role should be. Part of our mission as an urban university with an urban mission is helping to improve life in our urban area. Also, our Challenge for Excellence goals for research identify the west Louisville pollution study as a prime example of how we should work in our community."
For the results of the U of L research team's ongoing air monitoring results, go to: www.louisville.edu/org/wjcctf/.
