Dark, ashy wildfire sediment still sits on L.A beaches. But there’s no health risk, officials say
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As warmer days approach, many Angelenos eager to once again spread their toes in the sand may find an unwelcome sight along the shoreline: dark, ashy sediment still sitting on beaches from the devastating January firestorm.
But residents need not fear the detritus, which is composed of fine ash that swirled together with sand and washed ashore, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced.
Tests performed by the L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board found that the charred silt does not contain wildfire-related chemicals at levels considered to be dangerous to human health, the health department concluded.
“Samples from nearly a dozen beaches along the L.A. County coastline were tested for metals — polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — which are chemicals that may be found in runoff after wildfires,” the county Department of Beaches and Harbors said in a news release. “These results were compared to California and U.S. environmental standards for residential soil, and all results were below those values or within background concentrations.”
How to deal with all those dangerous lithium-ion batteries in the burn zones? Sift. Brine. Crush (in two bright blue ‘sausage grinders’)
Although the sediment itself is not chemically hazardous, beachgoers are still warned to beware of any physical debris that may lurk on the sand and in the water. This includes sharp objects such as burned branches, twisted metals, broken glass and rusted nails that could cause injury.
There are no plans to scrape away the ashy sediment as part of the wildfire debris removal process, as doing so could cause coastal erosion and destroy marine habitat, officials said. The beach ecosystem will recover naturally as tides and weather gradually break down and wash away the dark-colored silt.
Earlier this week, the public health department lifted its final wildfire-related ocean water advisory and declared that beaches in the burn area — from Las Flores State Beach to Santa Monica State Beach — are once again safe for swimming. That decision was made based on ocean-water testing conducted by the Water Quality Control Board that also found no wildfire-related substances at levels dangerous to human health.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said the ocean water advisory for Las Flores State Beach to Santa Monica State Beach has been lifted.
Heal the Bay, a nonprofit environmental organization, intends to release results from its own testing of the sand and ashy sediment soon, its communications director, Jillian Marshall, told The Times.
In a March 28 update on environmental monitoring efforts, the group said it was “cautiously optimistic that chemical contamination from the fires no longer poses a major risk for beachgoers.”
Heal the Bay took ocean-water samples in late January at 10 sites from Paradise Cove in Malibu all the way down to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and tested for 116 pollutants.
The organization released the results of that testing last month, saying they were “much better than expected, diminishing fears about human health impacts from polluted runoff in fire-scarred areas.”
Though the results did not show chemical contamination at levels that pose a danger to human health, they did show above-normal concentration of heavy metals that could have harmful long-term impacts on marine ecosystems.
Levels of lead and other heavy metals spiked in L.A.’s coastal waters after the January fires, raising serious concerns for the long-term health of the marine food chain.
Heal the Bay found concentrations of aluminum, iron, selenium and manganese that were higher than drinking water standards, sometimes by 10 times as much. Those metals can damage cells, interrupt biological processes and impair reproductive and immune functions in marine animals.
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