In a slick campaign-style advertisement, the operators at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles ran a Proposition 65 notice in the Los Angeles Times last week.  Proposition 65 is a California law that protects residents from toxic substances, and the agreement on the notices was struck with the Attorney General's office.  The notice shows an ominous black mass covering the majority of the harbor area and provides a "Port Exhaust Warning."  The Notice further states "Chemicals in diesel exhaust are known by the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.  Operations at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are sources of diesel exhaust in the greater Los Angeles area."  Advocates and health experts have been pushing this issue for a long time, and the polluting tenants at the ports are finally telling people the truth about their polluting operations.  The website has several ads, including one that shows a ship and states "Change is in the Air."  Well, to be honest, I'm not so sure change is in the air.  Actually, the diesel exhaust coming from these port operations contains over 40 toxic air contaminants, including benzene, arsenic, and formaldehyde, that is in the air.  However, we hope that as clean up programs like the clean trucks programs are implemented, there will be true change in the air.   

In a strange portion of the website, it talks about what people can do to take action.  The section recommends that people monitor various websites (it does not provide a link to these websites-by the way, here is SCAQMD's Air Monitoring Website) to see if particulate matter levels are high.  If there are high levels of pollution, which happens frequently in the harbor area, it then lists a whole host of things people should do (e.g. keep windows closed, exercise indoors at a shopping mall or gym, vacuum with HEPA filters).  The interesting thing about the website is that it does not encourage people to take action by telling the ports and their polluting tenants what actions the polluters should be taking.  For example, maybe when people want to go for walks and play outdoors, they could recommend that shipping companies take their ships and unload them indoor at malls or at a gymnasium.  Well, enough of the sarcasm-I am going to take the liberty of taking action in a different way than the ways suggested by the polluting tenants at the ports.   

Now, here is a list of action items for these polluting port actors.

• Quit opposing regulations and other programs that will clean up our air and protect public health such as the California Air Resources Board ship rules aimed at cleaning up toxic ship pollution;
• Shipping companies need to use cleaner fuels and quit dragging their feet;
• Instead of building near-dock rail facilities, take cargo right off the docks and load it onto trains;
• Support the port of Los Angeles clean trucks program and help bring the rapid conversion to an all-electric port truck fleet; and
• Support cleaner transportation systems like electrified rail that runs on renewable energy.

These are just a few suggestions, and my colleagues and I have many more.  But for now, we're going to continue to push the ports and their polluting tenants until they have no need for a Proposition 65 warning.