Standing in Shannon Magid’s El Segundo backyard for the past three weeks, she said, has been like being inside a giant outhouse.
The double-paned windows, a continuously running air conditioner and two recently purchased air purifiers minimize the stench inside her home, where she lives with her family less than a mile from the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant. But in the stairwell, Magid said, the odor lingers.
“It triggered my asthma today,” she said earlier this week, “and about a week ago, my husband and I had the worst headache.”
Magid is not alone.
That lingering, sometimes overpowering smell has been the most omnipresent reminder for El Segundo residents of the nearly catastrophic incident that occurred at Hyperion last month:
On July 11, debris backed up the plant. The facility flooded, damaging equipment and forcing officials to send untreated sewage into the ocean until around 4 a.m. July 12 – 17 million gallons total. Beaches closed for four days.
The fallout from the incident has grown in the weeks since, with a report presented to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors noting failures by both LA Sanitation & Environment – which operates Hyperion – and the county Department of Public Health, whose top official apologized for “failures” in notifying the public. LA City officials have worked to repair Hyperion while DPH has said it sent officials door-to-door to talk to residents. All the while, wastewater that’s only been partially treated has continued making its way into the ocean.
And there is the odor.
LA Sanitation officials have confirmed the smell comes from Hyperion, saying it will continue until repairs are finished. To help people cope, LA city has offered reimbursement for hotel stays or air conditioning.
Inspectors from the region’s air quality watchdog have monitored the vapors daily.
But while the odor persists, two primary concerns remain:
What effect has the smell had on quality of life in El Segundo — and could health problems ensue?
The answer to the first requires only a stroll around the seaside town.
But the second is far more complex.
Overpowering stench
Residents gag. They cough. They choke. Their eyes water.
Those who call El Segundo home have complained, for days now, that the stench coming from Hyperion is, at times, unbearable.
Los Angeles has received 2,135 applications for either air conditioning or hotel reimbursements as of Tuesday morning, Aug. 3, Elena Stern, spokeswoman for the L.A. Department of Public Works, which oversees LA Sanitation, said in an email. That’s about 13.5% of El Segundo’s population.
Residents of Westchester, a Los Angeles neighborhood about 6 miles from Hyperion, and those driving on the 405 Freeway have reported getting a whiff of the odor.
And a half-dozen El Segundo residents who live closest to Hyperion described the smell, in interviews this week, as putrid, overwhelming, noxious. And like rotten eggs.
That last descriptor is particularly apt, since it is the aromatic quality of hydrogen sulfide, a compound common during decomposition – and in sewage.
“It is just horrible,” Magid said.
To be sure, the odor’s severity comes and goes, with Magid saying it seems to depend on the wind, with the morning often worse than in the afternoon.
But Magid, a 20-year resident, said the stench is bad enough that her family no longer uses their backyard and sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night – gagging.
And El Segundo residents, generally speaking, are not squeamish people.
The town is wedged between an oil refinery, Hyperion, two power plants and Los Angeles International Airport. The occasional foul aroma is prosaic here.
The current stench, residents have said, is anything but.
“Maybe three or five times per year you get out of the car and it smells bad,” Magid said. “But we’ve never had this.”
But a larger concern looms:
Is the stench harmful to health?
Health questions unclear
The answer is hard to discern.
Public accounts would suggest yes, at least in the short term.
Residents have reported coughing, headaches, nausea and skin rashes as a result of the odor.
Neal Boushell, whose family lives a block from Hyperion’s open air tanks of partially treated sewage, said the smell caused his daughter to vomit. And his son developed rashes on his skin, which, Boushell said, the family believes the odor caused.
“As far as we know, he is not allergic to anything at all,” Boushell said. “We are just breathing this in all day long.
“This is an environmental catastrophe,” he added.
When asked to respond to such reports, Stern, with LA Public Works, advised folks to see a doctor.
“Residents who are experiencing symptoms should seek medical assistance,” she said in her email, “and can file a claim with LASAN.”
Determining potential long-term consequences, however, has been more difficult.
The Department of Public Health, for example, announced last week that it would send officials door-to-door to talk to residents.
But when asked via email, at around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, about the focus of those house calls, DPH responded about six hours later saying it needed more time to answer that question.
The department also asked for an extension to answer several other questions, including whether the odor causes a public health danger and whether the agency is tracking potential Hyperion-related illnesses.
But a flier DPH put on people’s doors, a copy of which was obtained by the Southern California News Group, did mention that hydrogen sulfide could cause headaches, nausea, and irritation to the eyes, nose and throat.
Then there is the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
The regional watchdog has sent inspectors to conduct daily monitoring around Hyperion, including at homes.
Soon after the spill, those inspectors issued 11 notices of violations involving odors from the facility causing a public nuisance.
The focus of the odor, in terms of both aromatic and medical implications, seems to be hydrogen sulfide.
In small quantities, the compound is mostly harmless.
But in larger amounts, it creates the rotten egg smell, and can cause itchy and watery eyes, according to the California Air Resources Board. The smell can also cause headaches, nausea and vomiting. At extremely high concentrations, more severe consequences can occur, including death.
The concentrations at which each of those effects occur, however, doesn’t seem settled.
CARB, for example, says the average level at which people can smell hydrogen sulfide is 0.03 parts per million to 0.05 parts per million. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though, says the smell permeates at 0.5 parts per billion.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has a different standard.
AQMD did not provide data on the concentration of hydrogen sulfide near Hyperion by deadline.
But the agency did put a statement up on its website Tuesday saying daily measurements in the community and at permanent nearby air monitors have not shown hydrogen sulfide or other volatile organic compounds to be at unhealthy levels since July 22.
“Residents experiencing health symptoms are encouraged to contact their healthcare provider,” the AQMD notice said, “and to minimize how much of the odors they are breathing by staying indoors with doors and windows closed.”
One of those fence line monitors is at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, about a mile away from Hyperion as the crow flies.
That data, available online and in parts per billion, shows that the highest reading for hydrogen sulfide came on July 27, when it hit 3.5 parts per billion.
On Tuesday, the highest reading was 0.92 ppb.
Both are well below the levels for any severe health consequences, including life-threatening conditions, which OSHA puts at 100 parts per million, or 100,000 ppb.
(To convert ppm to pbb, multiply parts per million by 1,000.)
That doesn’t answer everything, however.
For one, it’s not clear how much hydrogen sulfide would dissipate from Hyperion to the St. Anthony’s monitor. And for another, the St. Anthony’s readings also fall below the average thresholds for odor detections – let alone to the overwhelming extent residents describe.
“We don’t know the long-term health effects that have happened,” said Christine Johnson, who lives on the east side of El Segundo and still smells the odor.
Answers to these and other questions related to the spill also appear elusive for elected and appointed officials. El Segundo Mayor City Manager Scott Mitnick, for example, said he has struggled to get answers from Hyperion and U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu has asked the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration to conduct an investigation.
In the meantime, residents remain concerned about their health – and the lingering stench.
It’s been so bad, in fact, that Corrie Zupo, whose family lives about a mile from Hyperion, left town last week to escape.
Despite having central air conditioning, Zupo said, “it still smells like poop in the house.”