Hospital visits due to smoke inhalation increased during the Boyle Heights warehouse fire
The number of Angelenos going to the hospital with sore throats and concerns about smoke inhalation spiked after a fire broke out at a large Lineage cold storage facility in Boyle Heights this month, The Times has learned.
The fire burned for eight days from June 17 and involved solar panels, foam insulation and industrial equipment.
During that time, more than three times as many people went to emergency departments within a 10-mile radius citing a fire or smoke inhalation compared to two weeks ago, according to Los Angeles County Department of Public Health data obtained through a public records request.
The agency also noted a doubling of patients reporting throat pain within five kilometers of the fire on June 21 – 1.9 times the initial levels.
Typically, fewer than 50 people go to the emergency room each day for sore throats, and fewer than 20 people for smoke inhalation, the department said.
Hospitalization details were followed by the department syndromic surveillance projectwhich monitors trends in what people report when they come to emergency departments in LA County, and the diagnosis codes noted by providers. The system is not as complete as a patient’s complete health records, and doctors may not always include key words about “fire,” “smoke” or other circumstantial information in their diagnoses, the public health department said.
As such, “it cannot capture the actual number of [emergency department] visits related to fire symptoms and likely underestimates the true burden of fire-related symptoms,” the department said.
Perhaps unexpectedly, the department said it did not notice a significant increase in asthma, respiratory symptoms or emergency department visits related to pulmonary disease during the fire.
But even these preliminary findings are concerning, experts say. The fire is believed to have started in the solar area on the roof of the 500,000 square-foot building, which holds 85 million frozen meals. Then it reached the ammonia line, which brings two short residential orders to nearby residents.
Over the next week, the fire continued to burn due to dense foam inside the building’s walls and other unknown industrial materials, covering much of LA in red smoke. Residents in downtown LA, northeast LA, Burbank, the San Gabriel Valley and many other areas of the city and state reported seeing and smelling smoke.
The South Coast Air Quality Control District has issued several warnings about unhealthy levels of PM 2.5, or fine particulate matter. The city and county have opened two smoke inhalation facilities in the vicinity so people can breathe clean air.
It is still not clear exactly what that smoke is that people are breathing. Industrial fires produce far more emissions than wood-burning smoke from wildfires.
“The composition of the smoke can include toxic chemicals, fine particles and other serious risks to lung health depending on the conditions of the fire and what’s burned,” said Will Barrett, assistant president of national clean air policy at the American Lung Assn., said the fire is burning. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable.
David Eisenman, director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters, said urban industrial fires can also represent a danger that standard PM 2.5 warnings don’t always address. Those advisories are “dull tools” that don’t adequately capture emissions from the burning of man-made materials — or suggest that the source of pollution could include burning batteries or toxic refrigerants, he said.
The fact that the initial numbers don’t show an increase in asthma attacks is “somewhat reassuring,” Eisenman said. But “it’s possible that people will go to their doctors who care for them, which they won’t catch. This data needs to be tracked.”
The air district and the US Environmental Protection Agency deployed air monitors to check particulate matter, airborne toxic metals and other hazardous compounds during the first days of the fire. The air district said it did not detect significant levels of air pollutants during the first two days of the fire, although it recorded the highest concentrations of particulate matter during the hot period.
Some of the measurements taken by mobile monitors, which are five-minute snapshots, also showed increases in bromine and chlorine, which are often found when buildings are new and at levels “below short-term health exposure limits,” the air district said. Started PM 2.5 continuous. monitoring at two nearby primary schools on the third day.
The LA Fire Department said it found low levels of toxic hydrogen fluoride on the second day of the fire, which could be the result of burning lithium-ion batteries.
Lineage, which owns the warehouse, said no concentration of ammonia was detected in the air at any time.
“There is no doubt that this fire has had a great impact on the local community, and we are determined to show it in every way,” company officials wrote in a statement last week. They said Lineage worked closely with the Fire Department during the fire and brought masks, air purifiers and other supplies to the community, and will work to ensure the fastest cleanup possible.
The long-term health effects of the fire and its smoke likely won’t be known unless researchers conduct follow-up studies, UCLA’s Eisenman said.
For example, there may be delayed pulmonary effects from hydrogen fluoride and flammable foam inhalation that – when combined with high levels of PM 2.5 in a dense urban environment – produce health effects that were not seen in emergency room data.
“They will be seen in primary care office visits and chronic disease increases in the next few weeks,” she said. “So from a public health perspective, this fire is not over yet.”
