Researchers from the University of California at San Diego and San Diego University (they are separate institutions) said they have found dangerous levels of toxic gas floating around the Tijuana River Valley.
The team says they detected high levels of hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen cyanide gas while monitoring the local air quality. There was so much gas, they said, that they stopped working and tried to warn the public about the dangerous atmospheric conditions. Several schools in the South Bay school district have stopped any outdoor activities citing “heat and high levels of toxins.”
Local residents have reported what they called an “unbearable” odor in the past few weeks. The odor and gasses are believed to originate from raw sewage coming out of Mexico and inundating the Tijuana River Valley.
Politicians are getting aboard the issue, too. Several state lawmakers sent a letter to both President Joe Biden and Governor Gavin Newsom begging for a state of emergency to be declared based on the university researchers’ findings. They say “these fumes” are causing a serious threat to the health and safety of everyone living in South San Diego.
The county government is pushing back. Nora Varga, a supervisor for San Diego County, countered these claims in a September 10 press conference. She said there is no “imminent threat,” and that county public health staff are gathering data to get a more accurate picture of the situation.
And now the researchers are pushing back on the pushback. Kim Prather is the director of the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment at UC San Diego. She disapproved of Vargas’ statements at the press conference and said her team had found “unsafe air quality.”
Supervisor Vargas’s statements contradict the researchers’ “calibrated, validated” data on the gasses, she said, and ignores a number of health complaints from people living in the area. Residents have allegedly reported migraine headaches, breathing problems, and gastrointestinal distress.
Prather said it was “deeply concerning” that a public health official would offer such a “misleading” response.
The stench has been a problem for some time, whether or not it is actively sickening people beyond nausea and distaste. Back in February, the mayor of Imperial Beach, Paloma Aguirre, said the smell is worse than it’s ever been, and called the problem “the border crisis nobody is talking about.”
