MacGREGOR: AMOUNT AND PROPORTIONS OF DDT 



Table 1.— Relation between ratio of DDT in liver to DDT in flesh and percent of oil in flesh of 

 five species of bottom dwelling fishes from Santa Monica Bay in 1970. 



water. The "rivers" of southern California are its 

 sewers, and the two largest of these, in the 400 

 million gallons (1.51 million m^) per day class, are 

 the outlets of the Hyperion treatment plant that 

 serves the city of Los Angeles and those of the 

 White Point treatment plant that serves Los 

 Angeles County. 



The Hyperion plant empties into the head of an 

 underwater canyon in the northern half of Santa 

 Monica Bay, and the White Point plant empties 

 into the ocean off Palos Verdes Peninsula. Fish 

 samples that showed very high DDT residues 

 came from southern Santa Monica Bay about 

 midway between the two sewer outfalls. 



The County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles 

 County (CSDLAC) began a monitoring program to 

 test for CHC pesticides in its sewerage system in 

 December 1969 (Carry and Redner, 1970). They 

 found that very high concentrations of DDT were 

 present in the sewer system. In March 1970, they 

 began to sample the sewer trunk lines in order to 

 pinpoint the sources of DDT input into the sewer 

 system. 



They soon discovered that the source of most of 

 the DDT pollution was the Montrose Chemical 

 Corporation, a major manufacturer of DDT, lo- 

 cated in the city of Torrance. Los Angeles Times 

 staff writer, John Dreyfus, reported (7 October 

 1970), after interviewing a Montrose official, that 

 at that time, Montrose was the only manufacturer 

 of DDT left in the United States, and that it ac- 

 counted for two-thirds of the world's sales of DDT. 



The CSDLAC found that water samples taken 

 from the sewers immediately upstream from 

 Montrose contained 34 parts per billion (ppb) of 

 DDT and its metaboHtes (DDD and DDE) in a flow 

 of 25.3 million gallons (95.8 thousand m'^) per day 

 or 7.2 lb (3.27 kg) of total DDT per day, while 

 samples taken immediately downstream con- 



tained 2,950 ppb in a flow of 26.6 million gallons 

 (100.7 m3) per day or 654 lb (297 kg) of total DDT 

 per day (Carry and Redner, 1970). 



In April 1970, Montrose began hauling most of 

 its processing wastes to a storage area, which 

 caused a considerable drop in CHC entering the 

 CSDLAC disposal plant. However, in May 180 lb 

 (81.6 kg) per day CHC, of which 150 lb (68.0 kg) 

 was DDT and its metabolites, were still found to be 

 entering the White Point plant. The primary 

 source of this was found to be the sewer trunk line 

 serving Montrose Chemical Corporation. Because 

 the composition of the total DDT sampled, 14% 

 DDT, 48% DDD, and 38% DDE, was different from 

 the Montrose effluent previously sampled, 

 74% DDT, 5% DDD, and 21% DDE, CSDLAC per- 

 sonnel concluded that the primary source of pollu- 

 tion was from old deposits in the sewer lines. 



Between 11 December 1970, and 1 July 1971, 

 567,000 lb (257,000 kg) of deposits, of which 7,700 

 lb (3,500 kg) were total DDT, were removed from 

 the interceptor system that served Montrose 

 (Redner and Payne, 1971). The cleaning of this 

 section of the sewer lines also stirred up old de- 

 posits which were washed down into the sewerage 

 disposal plant, resulting in an increase in total 

 DDT entering the plant. By October 1971, the 

 total CHC entering the disposal plant had de- 

 creased to 60 lb (27 kg) a day of which 28 lb ( 13 kg) 

 was total DDT and the remaining 32 lb (14 kg) 

 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). 



Since March 1971, an average of 22,000 gallons 

 (83.3 m^) a day of alkaline waste from the Mon- 

 trose plant has been trucked to the Sanitation 

 District's landfill on Palos Verdes Peninsula, and 

 another 700 gallons (25.9 m^) of acid waste has 

 been trucked to a quarry. The alkaline waste was 

 found to contain about 3,000 ppm of total DDT 

 (Redner and Payne, 1971) or about 550 lb (250 kg) 



277 



