A year-long Commerce City air pollution study by Cultivando, a non-profit Hispanic health organization, returned some surprising information about the sources of pollution in the area surrounding the Suncor oil refinery located there and thought by residents to be the chief source of pollutants.

The refinery has been the focal point of public concern for many years, with allegations that emissions from the plant are harming the health of people — especially children — in the surrounding communities.

“Environmental racism is forcing our communities to endure cumulative effects of toxic exposure, which impacts multiple generations in the area where Suncor has operated for nearly a century without sufficient scrutiny or accountability,” said Executive Director Olga González.

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Data gathered by Cultivando’s air monitoring program shows that Suncor is just one of multiple sources of air pollutants in Commerce City’s industrialized areas surrounding the intersection of I-270 and Vasquez Boulevard, including the Denver sewer plant, which is adjacent to the refinery.

The study, conducted by Boulder Atmosphere Innovation Research, collected hundreds of thousands of data points over the course of a year from sophisticated air monitoring equipment at a fixed location and a mobile monitoring trailer deployed at more than 20 locations over the course of the study. The data was processed and reduced to graphs and graphics for presentation at a press briefing by Cultivando at the University of Denver Wednesday.

“According to the state of Colorado, Suncor is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the state. It emits about 1 million tons each year,” said González at the meeting. “It’s greenhouse gas releases a roughly equivalent to the annual tailpipe emissions of the 200,000 plus new cars sold in the state last year.”

Cultivando said people living around the refinery have been suffering from maladies including nosebleeds, migraines, asthma, and other illnesses they blame on the refinery.

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One of the experts speaking for Cultivando said there’s a synergistic effect to exposure to multiple compounds that state air pollution permits don’t take into account.

“One of the problems with trying to regulate based on a single compound is that the compounds that are present in the air enter the body and they do more than just add effects. For example, two irritants don’t make it twice as irritating. It could make it 10 times as irritating,” said Dr. David Brown, a public health toxicologist and founding member of Environment and Human Health, Inc.

It’s a science-based health research and education organization. Brown presented information about the health hazards of Commerce City’s pollution problems.

He pointed out the difference between state emissions standards for industry and limits on exposure to pollution when it comes to people.

“If you’re concerned about the health of people in the neighborhood, you should be looking at house standards,” said Brown. “If you’re concerned about regulating large areas such as the whole of Boulder, you should be looking at regulatory standards.”

Regulatory standards, he says, don’t adequately gauge the effects of air pollution on people.

“So, the standards for air and water are regulatory standards and they have to be reproducible, which means you have to take them for a long time, which is why the state, and the local people are giving you regulatory averages, because that’s what they need to do,” said Brown. “But the unstable standards are exactly what you need as standards for those low concentrations, if you’re trying to prevent health effects in people.”

Both Brown and González called for reforming the permitting standards to better reflect the impacts of short-term exposures on nearby residents.

“I think our ultimate objective is to take into consideration the actual harm that is being caused to our community and hoping that policy makers will join us in listening to community concerns and creating regulations that actually protect human health,” said González in an interview with The Denver Gazette.

Air pollutants captured by the monitoring system include carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, ozone, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, methane, volatile organic compounds such as ethane, propane, benzene, hexane, and toluene, hydrogen cyanide, and — to everyone’s surprise — low levels of radioactive radon gas and particulates that other studies say come from oil and gas extraction that get concentrated and emitted at refineries.

The principal researcher for Boulder A.I.R., Dr. Detlev Helmig, told The Denver Gazette in an interview that this monitoring project provides both quantitative sampling of pollutants and an indication of where or what the source might be.

“So, in order to facilitate that, what you need is high time resolution measurements and lots of data. That’s what we’re doing. We have these automated stations that run and collect data around the clock, on-and-on and on day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month,” said Helmig. “It’s very different. Not everybody does it that way.”

In fact, Helmig said, nobody in the United States has done monitoring for radon from oil and gas production.

The system gathers tens or hundreds of thousands of data points that include the chemical identification, he said, the wind direction, and the wind velocity minute by minute, which is then correlated and run through a computer program that produces a graphic representation of the concentration of the chemical measured and the general direction of the source.

“It’s just like a compass,” said Helmig. “It shows you the degrees and a compass from where the pollution originated.”

And those graphics identify the general direction and distance of a pollution source from the monitoring station, located near East 64th Street and Colorado Blvd. It’s about half a mile north of the Suncor refinery.

One slide from the Cultivando event showed increased levels of propane from two sources, another shows low levels of radon from another.

But Dr. Helmig cautions that these generalized results do not specifically identify sources of pollution.

Suncor is certainly responsible for some emissions but insists that its own fence line air monitoring system shows that toxic levels of pollutants are not leaving the plant. Every time there is an “exceedance” of a regulatory limit Suncor must report it to both state and federal authorities, and alert neighbors.

“Suncor is supportive of all air monitoring efforts, which is why we voluntarily launched a community air monitoring more than a year ago,” said Loa Esquilin Garcia, spokesperson for Suncor in a statement. “As part of the program, independent health scientists conduct health risk assessments based on the data collected. Since the air monitoring program launched in August 2021, compounds measured in multiple North Denver communities have remained below acute and chronic health protective guideline values routinely used by state and federal public health agencies.”

“We value our relationships with Cultivando and Boulder A.I.R., which operates and maintains Cultivando’s community air monitoring program,” Garcia said. “We are pleased to have hosted Cultivando and Boulder A.I.R. staff as well as other community leaders at educational sessions to share information about CCND Air Monitoring and receive their feedback. We plan to continue listening to community and sharing information about community air quality; we are committed to doing this work in a data-driven and collaborative way.”

Since the December 24 emergency shutdown caused by extreme cold weather, and during the restarting of the refinery units currently underway, Suncor has reported 33 exceedances between Dec. 24 and Feb. 15. The next regular report, due March 16, was not available as of press time.

Excess pollution emissions can occur during shutdown or startup of certain equipment,” said Leah Schleifer, spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in an email. “The Air Pollution Control Division is conducting a thorough investigation to verify the magnitude and duration of emissions exceedances from Suncor during each of these events.”

Suncor officials did not respond to requests for when the plant will re-open.