SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — In the Tijuana River Valley, different surveys have been trying to collect data on the dangers of toxic waste and how it affects the health of people and even their pets.
A new survey by San Diego County has received a thousand responses as of Monday, Nov. 4, which is half of the county’s goal. The survey, called the Assessment of Chemical Exposures (ACE), is intended for people who work, live or have visited impacted areas and was made available on Oct. 21.
It asks a series of questions regarding physical and mental health, as well as the respondent’s medical history and health services used. The county said pet health is also included in the survey.
“I’m very excited about the survey because it gives an opportunity for the people that live in the Tijuana River Valley — there’s hundreds of thousands of people exposed to the toxic gases, the flooding, the sewage — and now they have an opportunity to express in a form what is happening to them,” said Dr. Matt Dickson, a physician at South Bay Urgent Care.
The ACE survey came after similar efforts made on the federal level by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which created the Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER). That survey, which focused on the communities in Imperial Beach and Nestor, kicked off the weekend of Oct. 17.
The CASPER was conducted in-person by visiting people in their residences, whereas the ACE can be filled in online. The county is taking responses until Nov. 22.
These surveys were a result of the attention brought to the high levels of toxic waste in the South Bay air. Specifically, dangerous levels of hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide stemming from raw sewage flowing in from Mexico into the Tijuana River Valley.
The impacts also led to numerous beach closures, with some even closed for more than a thousand days.
“We need something done, we need something done now,” Dixon said. “The longer we wait, the more people are getting sick.”
He also expressed concerns about the upcoming rainy season and an increase in the likelihood of people getting sick from the raw sewage mixed in with the flooded streets.
However, county leaders, federal and state health officials said there was “no imminent danger or threat from hydrogen cyanide,” stating that the methods used to monitor and assess the spike in toxic gases were “flawed.”
FOX 5/KUSI reporter Dan Plante contributed to this report.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
