When it comes to industrial air pollution, the South Bay more than holds its own.
Consider the list released this week of 1988's top producers of reactive hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, two key pollutants that react in sunlight to form ozone, a main ingredient in smog.
According to the ranking by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, South Bay plants made up eight of the top 10 producers of reactive hydrocarbons and six of the top 10 sources of nitrogen oxides in the four-county South Coast Air Basin.
The No. 1 producer in both categories was Chevron's giant El Segundo oil refinery, which in 1988 released more than 1,400 tons of reactive hydrocarbons and 3,700 tons of nitrogen oxides into the air.
For air quality officials, the South Bay's showing came as no surprise.
"Many of your major refineries and power plants are located in that area, and they put out a lot of emissions," said Wayne Zwiacher, an engineer with the Air Quality Management District. "They're big plants."
Officials from several companies listed in the rankings said the lists are misleading because they do not include all major sources of air pollution.
The annual rankings, based on industry-supplied data reviewed by the AQMD, cover 30,000 so-called stationary air polluters, ranging from oil refineries to dry-cleaning stores.
They do not take into account pollution from the estimated 8 million motor vehicles in the South Coast Air Basin, which encompasses Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties and the non-desert portion of San Bernardino County.
According to the AQMD, motor vehicles churn out more than two-thirds of the region's reactive hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.
"While we recognize these companies are the largest sources of industrial pollution, the biggest culprit in the basin's air pollution is the automobile," James Lents, the AQMD's executive officer, acknowledged in a statement accompanying the rankings.
In the ranking of industrial air polluters, eight South Bay plants were among the top 10 sources of reactive hydrocarbons, which are produced by the incomplete combustion of gasoline and by fumes from fuels, paints and dry-cleaning solvents.
The plants and their rankings: Chevron's El Segundo refinery (1); Arco's Carson refinery (2); the Shell (3), Texaco (5) and Unocal (7) refineries in Wilmington; the Trendwest Furniture factory in Carson (8); Mobil's Torrance refinery (9), and the Reynolds Metals plant in Torrance (10).
