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San Francisco Chronicle​

A new toxic metal has been found in the air after L.A. fires. No one knows where it's coming from

Krista Copelan's home didn't burn in the Eaton Fire. But for months afterward, it was filled with poisonous traces of things that did. Arsenic from treated wood and pesticides in the soil. Copper, likely from the wiring systems of the thousands of homes reduced to ash. Lead, discovered on the floor of her daughter's bedroom, from old paint and leaded gasoline that leached into the ground only to be vaporized by flames. And on Copelan's kitchen floor: beryllium. A little-known earth metal prized for being lighter than aluminum but more rigid than steel, beryllium is safely used commercially in numerous products, including electronics and cars. But when heated, objects containing beryllium can release the metal as microscopic particles that infiltrate the lungs. The substance is so dangerous that even a minuscule concentration in air over time — equivalent to a few grains of salt in an Olympic-size swimming pool — can spur development of cancer cells, or a lifelong and sometimes fatal respiratory disease. Beryllium has been found in dozens of homes in the Eaton and Palisades fire zones, test results obtained by the Chronicle show. Air quality monitors also picked up on elevated levels in the outdoor air in Los Angeles as late as this May. 'To see beryllium in the ambient air, above background levels, that's like a five-alarm fire,' said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics, an environmental justice advocacy group. It's the first time beryllium has been documented in homes at scale following a wildfire, according to a dozen researchers, doctors, regulatory officials and industrial hygienists interviewed by the Chronicle. None of these experts said they knew why such elevated levels of beryllium are present in Los Angeles homes via wildfire debris. And the vast majority of homes that survived January's Eaton and Palisades fires have not been tested for beryllium. Most industrial hygienists testing smoke-damaged homes for insurance companies or owners either aren't testing for it at all or aren't conducting sensitive enough tests to find it, experts said. The positive results reviewed by the Chronicle were mostly provided by homeowners who paid thousands of dollars out of pocket for their own tests. Reporters contacted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Department of Public Health, the U.S. Geological Survey and other federal and state agencies tasked with monitoring wildfire pollution. None of the agencies said they had heard about potential beryllium contamination. Grant Boyken, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Health, said the department 'is not aware of any investigations of beryllium inside homes after wildfires.' 'Beryllium blew me away,' said Keith Bein, an associate professional researcher at the UC Davis Air Quality Research Center, when told about the results. 'I don't even have a good hypothesis of where that's coming from.' There are no national or statewide standards for how much beryllium inside a home is safe, nor for how to test for it or remove it. 'Unless you're a scientist or something, you don't know what this means,' said Jongsuk Yu, an Altadena homeowner and mother of two whose test results showed she had cyanide in her walls along with beryllium on her floors, a metal she didn't recognize. Across Altadena, many residents have returned to homes adjacent to those with elevated levels of beryllium, unaware that they may also be exposed to the toxic substance. Street cleaners sweep through blocks of both burned and standing homes. Cleaning crews spend hours inside houses, some of them without proper protective equipment. To warn their neighbors about the contamination around them, a grassroots coalition known as Eaton Fire Residents United has been collecting test results from homes in and around Altadena. The group shared with the Chronicle the results of 184 tests they gathered from homeowners. All tests came up positive for lead and most identified other contaminants, such as asbestos and cyanide. Fifty-two specifically tested for beryllium. Of those, nearly half were positive. Eleven of the tests had peak results that exceeded federal workplace safety standards for beryllium contamination on surfaces. Homes are typically tested by using wipes to sample ash from surfaces in various locations in the house. These compiled test results came from a variety of labs and hygienists with possibly differing standards and testing protocols, so they may not be perfectly comparable. One homeowner's tests yielded 1.1 micrograms of beryllium per 100 square centimeters on a floor inside their home — more than five times the threshold for contamination of industrial equipment recommended by the U.S. Department of Energy. Another found an estimated 0.6 micrograms per 100 square centimeters on a windowsill. Lee Newman, a pulmonologist who has studied the effects of beryllium on the body for four decades, reviewed the homeowners' test results at the Chronicle's request and said there is cause for concern. 'It's enough to convince me that there is the potential for people to be exposed to beryllium,' Newman said. 'How much they would be exposed to and whether it would be harmful to them would depend upon what happens to those surfaces starting now.' Experts said beryllium can be cleaned up using methods currently approved to remove lead, though not all hygienists agree on this. The task requires protective gear, specialized equipment and thorough retesting. Reporters spoke with 13 families whose smoke-damaged homes tested positive for lead, asbestos or other contaminants. Almost none of the tests checked for beryllium. The tests were mostly done by independent firms they hired and paid for out of pocket. All of these families said their insurers disputed the findings in some way, mainly by sending out their own experts to conduct new tests that were more limited in scope. Often, these examinations didn't look for metals at all, just 'combustion byproducts' like soot, char and ash. Three of the families said their insurers pressured them to move back into their contaminated homes before they were cleaned. At least nine said they felt forced to use cleaning or testing firms selected by their insurers, rather than companies of their choice. Scientists have spent decades studying what happens when a forest burns. Particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide can travel miles through the air, damaging hearts and lungs. But the discovery of beryllium underscores that California's largest wildfires increasingly burn well beyond forests. They're more destructive and more toxic, incinerating neighborhoods and business districts. State regulators and public health experts are struggling to measure and understand the changes, let alone craft effective safety regulations or inform families of the dangers they could face inside their homes. Standards on beryllium safety are designed solely for people in factories or laboratories and only exposed during eight-hour shifts, said Paul Wambach, a retired industrial hygienist for the Department of Energy, who helped craft the federal limits. To date, Wambach said, no study has examined how living in a home contaminated with beryllium particles can affect adults and children. Exposure to beryllium doesn't cause immediate health impacts, doctors said, but can lead to serious and even lethal diseases that may only emerge years down the line. History suggests that the full impact of the contamination may not be seen for several years. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, New York firefighters and cleanup crews were exposed to a slew of toxic substances from the World Trade Center's smoldering remains. In the subsequent years, thousands developed grave illnesses, including cancers and respiratory and digestive disorders. 'The main question from my point of view is, do you have another situation like the 9/11 recovery workers?' Wambach said. Extremely useful, incredibly toxic While few people have ever heard of beryllium, they've likely used products improved by the metal. It's exceptionally useful, resisting corrosion and maintaining its shape in both extremely hot and extremely cold temperatures. For those reasons, beryllium can be found, usually alloyed in small concentrations with copper, in vintage high-performance golf clubs, the air bag sensors of cars and the mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope. Beryllium is naturally present at harmless levels in soil, and occasionally in elevated concentrations due to pollution from coal burning. Though it's been in use since the 18th century, demand for beryllium didn't pick up until the 1930s and 1940s, when the nation began to recognize its utility in nuclear weapons and other defense technology. Today, the U.S. Defense Department considers beryllium so important that it keeps more than 15 tons stored in various forms in the National Defense Stockpile in case of national emergencies. But before Los Angeles, beryllium rarely, if ever, came up for industrial hygienists and researchers studying wildfire smoke and debris. When a fire sweeps through an area, the heat of the flames can cause the metals and chemicals inside soil or consumer products to vaporize and resolidify, finding their way into soot, char and ash, Bein and Wambach said. That debris, carried through the air by strong and even hurricane-force winds, infiltrates homes through open or poorly sealed windows, doors and attic vents. While experts who spoke with the Chronicle said they did not know the source of the elevated levels of beryllium, some speculated that a nearby facility that uses the metal might have polluted the soil. Others said the contamination may trace not to one source but thousands of burned goods, each containing a small amount of beryllium. A 2024 review of 49 studies examining wildland firefighters' exposure to potential carcinogens found only two that mentioned beryllium. One of those was done on a fire that burned close to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where J. Robert Oppenheimer led the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. According to data from the EPA, the only facility in Los Angeles County that had reported potentially releasing beryllium as of 2023 is located in Long Beach, more than 30 miles away from either fire zone. Soil samples taken in Los Angeles County by the USGS in the years before the fires were found to contain a concentration of beryllium consistent with typical background levels, though none of these samples were taken within the fire perimeters. Since the Palisades and Eaton fires, though, researchers have been finding beryllium in homes, in the water and in the air. Bein, the UC Davis air quality expert, has spent much of the last decade studying the changing chemistry of wildfire smoke. Adopting the style of a storm chaser, he drives Smart cars carrying special sampling equipment toward active wildfires and sticks sensors into smoke plumes to measure the particles within. For years, he's been sounding the alarm about a new paradigm his tools are picking up: Starting with the catastrophic Wine Country fires in 2017, which leveled whole neighborhoods in and around Santa Rosa, smoke became far more toxic. Prior to that, wildfires rarely hit more than a few hundred homes at most. But temperatures climbed, while development expanded into forested areas made more flammable by drought and aggressive fire suppression. For decades, firefighters pounced on every blaze, which allowed vegetation to build up. Now, infernos sweep through populous towns and cities. 'We really started destroying a lot of the built environment. That really changed the chemical composition (of smoke),' Bein said. A survey of contaminants by the environmental group Heal the Bay in January and February found elevated levels of beryllium and other metals along the Los Angeles coastline, posing 'serious risk' to marine life. The South Coast Air Quality Monitoring District detected beryllium levels 'above typical background concentrations' at three sites in and around Altadena; the highest reading was taken in May, four months after the fires. None of these levels were deemed a health risk by the district, spokesperson Rainbow Yeung told the Chronicle. But other experts told the Chronicle the very presence of elevated beryllium should be cause for alarm. 'If it's in your home, it's outside. If it's outside, it's in your home,' Williams said. Targeted tests What remains unclear is whether beryllium contaminated landscapes after previous fires in other parts of the U.S., experts said. Its absence in studies may just mean no one had been looking for it. Dawn Bolstad-Johnson, a certified industrial hygienist now working in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, has been testing homes damaged by fires for nearly a decade, and the effects of wildfire particulates on firefighters since 1998. Her exhaustive methods include taking hundreds of samples per home, many in hard-to-reach places, like the insides of air filtration systems and in crawl spaces. When Bolstad-Johnson began taking samples from homes in February, she wasn't finding beryllium. But in April, her lab retested many of the samples using an analytical method with a lower detection limit. From then on, samples in nearly every home began coming back positive for beryllium. She shared data with the Chronicle showing elevated beryllium levels in 21 homes she's tested, 17 of which were in Pacific Palisades and four in Altadena. The results ranged from just below federal safety standards to up to five times the standard. Bolstad-Johnson has spent her career exposing herself to harmful chemicals such as cyanide and lead, and air laced with benzene and formaldehyde. Finding beryllium felt different, she said, a clear sign that fire contaminants are getting more dangerous and less predictable. 'It's to the point that I'm not sure I want to continue doing this,' she said. 'I'm about ready to tap out. I mean, I'm crawling around in the stuff, quite literally.' There are numerous ways to analyze the chemical composition of a fire debris sample, and not all of them are precise enough to measure beryllium, according to Bein. He has never personally found beryllium in wildfire smoke or ash; the testing method he typically uses wouldn't pick up on it. But beryllium is toxic at much lower concentrations than other typical wildfire contaminants such as lead. To find it in homes, researchers must use more sensitive tests, Bein and Bolstad-Johnson said. Copelan's home sits about a half-mile from the Eaton Fire perimeter. But when she stepped inside it after the fire, bitter smoke smells permeated everywhere, and ash had gathered at every window and every door and covered her son's record player. She paid out of pocket for testing in late January. A week later, her test results came back positive for a slew of metals — and she realized she had no idea how to interpret the findings. She could tell the lead levels looked bad. A sample taken from her bedroom floor came back with 768 micrograms of lead per square foot, 70 times the EPA maximum limit for floor samples. But she hadn't heard of some of the other metals. 'We just had no way to know how concerned we should be,' she said. Copelan co-runs a Facebook group for fire survivors with standing homes, and many of their conversations have revolved around testing. Because they have no official sources telling them what to test for, or who to hire, neighbors have been relying on each other, sharing names of firms they hear are trustworthy and asking each other how to navigate their test results. It was on this page that an Altadena resident expressed alarm over the presence of beryllium in her home. Copelan looked and realized: Her own beryllium level was even higher. 'I was like, 'Oh, what's this about?'' she said. She still hasn't figured it out. Faced with more obvious concerns, like lead, Copelan said she hasn't had the time or mental energy to answer her own questions about beryllium. Even if she had gone looking for answers on what to do about beryllium, such information is scant. Lead is the only metal with an EPA-established legal limit in settled dust. Moreover, California has no statewide standard outlining how insurance companies should investigate and pay claims related to smoke contamination from fires. While Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara announced a task force to create such standards in May, the recommendations will likely come too late for Los Angeles fire victims, many of whom have already moved back into their homes, or soon will. Turning lungs into battlefields As a solid, on its own or an alloy, beryllium is harmless to humans, according to Newman, the pulmonologist. 'But when you disturb it,' he said, 'when you take it and grind it, polish it, sand it, melt it, any of those types of actions creates the potential to create fumes which are basically metal particles, dust of beryllium.' Beryllium particles are far smaller than the diameter of a human hair, making it easy for them to stay suspended in the air and to be inhaled. High concentration exposure to open wounds can cause lesions, or to the eyes, a type of persistent pink eye, Newman said. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified beryllium as a carcinogen, meaning it is linked to cancer. But the respiratory system is the biggest concern. When beryllium particles enter the lungs, they can, in some people, trigger an immune response known as beryllium sensitization, said John Balmes, a former professor of occupational medicine at UCSF. Genetics makes some people much more likely to become sensitized than others. Sensitization itself is symptomless, Balmes said — like an allergy that only activates when you come into contact with the thing you're allergic to. A person can become sensitized with minimal exposure through inhaling or even touching beryllium. Both Balmes and Newman have treated patients who never realized they'd come into contact with the metal. Beryllium dust particles can remain in buildings for years, or be carried around on workers' clothes or hair, Newman said. Those who are sensitized to beryllium can potentially develop chronic beryllium disease, known as berylliosis, a condition in which the immune system's repeated response to beryllium builds up inflammation in the lungs, similar to the inflammation that accompanies tuberculosis. The disease can eventually cause a chronic cough, shortness of breath, fatigue and decreased lung function. 'The lung becomes a kind of battlefield between the immune system reacting to the beryllium in the process of trying to get it out of the body,' Newman said. Relatively few sensitized people develop the chronic disease, Balmes said, and only a small subset of them experience major symptoms. But for those who do, the condition is debilitating and life-shortening, Newman said. 'As a physician who spent 25 years of my career taking care of patients, many of them with chronic beryllium disease, I can tell you flat-out that this can be a fatal illness,' he said. For decades, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Department of Energy have tried to prevent the disease by regulating how much beryllium workers can be exposed to over an eight-hour shift. In the air, it's 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter. But it's harder to quantify how much contamination on a surface should be considered dangerous, Newman said. Surface dust is only harmful if it reenters the air and is inhaled. OSHA has no standard for surface contamination, but the Department of Energy mandates that equipment cannot have more than 0.2 micrograms of beryllium per 100 square centimeters before it is released to the public. But even levels of beryllium below the Energy Department's standards can cause sensitization, Newman said. Raluca Scarlat, a professor of nuclear engineering, runs the SALT Research Group at UC Berkeley, where she and her students regularly work with molten salts containing beryllium. Inside the lab, they wear fitted respirators, shoe covers and three layers of gloves — two sealed to their lab coats with tape and the third pulled over the sleeves. The parts of the lab where they deal with beryllium are covered in sticky mats to catch any dust and prevent it from recirculating into the air, where it could be inhaled. Exposure is tracked through air monitoring, surface sample testing and annual blood tests for beryllium sensitization. Balmes said people returning to homes in Altadena and Pacific Palisades should, at a minimum, wear gloves and a well-fitted mask anytime they enter a structure that could have beryllium in it. They should also take precautions not to recirculate the dust by dry vacuuming or sweeping. Newman added that any wildfire survivors who begin to develop respiratory symptoms down the line should inform their doctors about their potential exposure to beryllium. A blood test exists to check for beryllium sensitization, though Newman advised waiting about a year to be tested. Whether homeowners are exposed to beryllium depends on what happens to the contaminated dust in their dwellings, experts said. If hygienists clean it up properly with HEPA vacuuming and wetting down surfaces with sponges or hoses to keep the particles from reentering the air, then risk should theoretically stay low. But there's no research on how well beryllium can be cleaned out of porous surfaces, like couches and carpets. Given this, Newman said the ideal solution would be to throw out all affected furniture. Thorough HEPA vacuuming should help, but beryllium dust could still reenter the air when someone, for instance, sits on a contaminated couch. 'You really are looking at 24-hour, seven-day-a-week kind of exposures,' Wambach said. 'I'd be worried. I would want to do something to try to get those levels down.' Grappling with insurers Most insurance policies include a provision that will pay for policyholders to live elsewhere while their home is uninhabitable. That coverage is the only way many survivors can afford to pay thousands a month in rent, as well as other expenses, on top of their mortgage. But this coverage ends once the insurance company considers a home livable again. And for many homeowners in Altadena, that time comes before they feel it's safe to move back in, often because the insurance company has not covered thorough testing and cleaning of their homes and possessions. Copelan is still struggling to get her insurance company, State Farm General, to pay for full testing and remediation of her home. While the insurer has started the cleaning process, it has not yet agreed to cover the cost of replacing all of her soft goods like clothes, sofas and blankets, which experts have recommended she discard based on their high levels of lead and other toxic metals. Others are struggling to even get professional wet cleaning. 'They keep trying to ignore the lead,' said Michelle Mapp, an Altadena resident whose home was damaged by smoke from the January fires. After Mapp paid for independent testing showing her home had high levels of lead throughout her house, including in her son's bedroom, she sent her results to State Farm. Instead of acknowledging the results, State Farm sent out its preferred cleaning company, ServPro of Gilbert, Ariz., which is not certified for lead abatement in California. A ServPro Gilbert representative said the firm had to stop cleaning her home immediately after learning her test results had come back positive for lead. Frustrated, Mapp hired a public adjuster. Then State Farm sent out another of its preferred vendors, Rimkus, to retest her home, but not for lead. The industrial hygienist who authored the report for State Farm only recommended that her home and soft goods be cleaned, to 'ensure that affected items and surfaces are free of fire residue and odor.' He did not recommend any specialized lead abatement services. A spokesperson for Rimkus did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, a State Farm spokesperson told the Chronicle that all claims are evaluated on a case-by-case basis using the available information to determine what next steps to take, including whether to use a certified industrial hygienist or another qualified expert to evaluate the damage. 'State Farm also reviews any information customers bring us that may help us identify applicable benefits under the policy. We're committed to providing the customer all the benefits they have available through their insurance policy,' the spokesperson wrote. None of the tests of Mapp's home looked for beryllium. When told that other homeowners had been finding the toxic metal in their homes, she had to Google it. 'Wow, it's scary,' she said. 'Maybe it's a good thing that we have more time before we can move back in, to figure out what's happening.' On a Thursday morning in June, Copelan met with a cleaning firm to go over the remediation plan. Her house would finally get a thorough cleaning paid for by State Farm, using methods approved for lead abatement. But she said it's still unclear how she can be certain the beryllium is gone, especially because the insurer hasn't agreed to replace all her soft goods. Many of Copelan's neighbors have already returned to homes that were not thoroughly tested or cleaned, she said, because they'd decided the benefits of moving home outweighed the risks of being exposed. Copelan said she won't move back until she knows it is safe. That means getting the home retested after it's cleaned, and likely another battle with State Farm over who pays for the additional tests. She dreads the thought of toxic substances lingering near her elementary school-age kids. 'We don't want to take any risks,' she said.