Free Blood Testing Offered In San Gabriel Valley In Response To Environmental Contamination From Quemetco Plant

AVOCADO HEIGHTS (CBSLA) — Top county health officials, along with other agency staff and volunteers, blanketed a San Gabriel Valley neighborhood Saturday.

The group was going door-to-door offering information and free blood testing for lead, arsenic and other chemicals as county leaders said they're trying to better educate residents about the environmental contamination from the nearby Quemetco battery recycling facility in the Avocado Heights area.

"My mom has a rare cancer, which was osteosarcoma cancer," Larisa Apodaca, one resident, said. "It does not run in the family, and is rare for adults."

Apodaca was one of dozens of residents who came to the health fair, which was also hosted by the county.

She grew up near the Quemetco plant and said she worries it may have impacted her health and her family as well.

"I was born with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia," she said. "Nobody knows exactly how it gets to you, but that's pretty much how it is. So we're just coming to see if the lead and all that was what actually caused it."

June Chavez said she has lived in the neighborhood for 59 years. Her home is two blocks from the plant.

"My granddaughter said she had a birth defect," Chavez said. "My daughter had cancer, so we're really concerned about the water too."

This is the second time county leaders have banded together to speak with residents about the potential impacts of the Quemetco plant.

"There are concerns in the community with respect to lead exposure as well as arsenic,"Hilda Solis, Los Angeles County supervisor, said.

Quemetco released a statement saying they would continue to fund blood level testing, and they also said they had received 198 tests back showing that lead was not at dangerous levels.