Cruel summer: Some of Los Angeles’ most popular and picturesque beaches may not be safe for the high season due to January’s Palisades fire, which burned more than 23,000 acres and damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 structures. Runoff from the toxic burn — which sent melted materials from not just homes and buildings but untold vehicles, electronics, batteries and solar panel arrays into the ocean — is still being analyzed by a state agency. But initial results could be worrying.
The water itself has stabilized following winter storms, when pollutant levels spike, according to government agencies that have been monitoring locations along a swath of coastline from Las Flores State Beach in Malibu to Dockweiler State Beach next to LAX. The potential health problem is the sand. Contamination from the fire zones settles into underwater sediment, then washes ashore with the tides. Some of this is visible (dark, silty material mixed in the sand) and some isn’t.
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California’s State Water Resources Control Board has begun limited monthly testing of the sediment. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issues advisories based on the findings. Additional sampling in late April will be made public before Memorial Day.
Field scientists have collected the top two centimeters to capture ash and other recently deposited materials. “Most of the chemicals associated with fire bind to the smallest particles in the surface materials, and thus collecting the top two centimeters captures the highest possible concentration of chemicals to provide a conservative assessment of potential health impacts,” the water board told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement.
So far, the state’s initial research has shown what have been deemed acceptable concentrations of toxins — nothing that would require a special cleanup by hazmat-suited workers. According to DPH, “Beachgoers may recreate on the sand.”
Yet local environmental advocacy organizations are wary. Testing shows that arsenic levels exceed safety standards — exponentially so at Will Rogers State Beach, which is immediately adjacent to the outflow of Rustic Creek and Santa Monica Canyon Creek. Those waterways have discharged most of the burned urban materials from the Palisades fire zone.
“We don’t recommend that folks go hang out on the beach between Las Flores and Montana Avenue [to the southeast] right now,” says Heal the Bay president Tracy Quinn. “Small children, in particular: They pick up the sand and consume it. The same with pets, who are naturally sniffing it and playing with debris.” She adds, “None of the stuff that we’re seeing is going to make someone immediately ill. What it does is increases your risk of long-term health concerns.”
Arsenic, a known carcinogen, can cause cancer as well as lead to liver and heart disease, digestive system problems and other health issues. The water board acknowledges the arsenic is above risk screening levels but — citing a 2020 assessment from another state agency, the Department of Toxic Substances Control — maintains the metalloid is “also within the range of background concentrations,” meaning the naturally occurring levels in local sediment.
Kelly Shannon McNeill, associate director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper, observes that “beach traffic is a huge part of our economy. [The government] doesn’t want to scare people. But as someone who’s a mom of a young child, I wouldn’t feel safe with her going to the beach right now. I wouldn’t let her play in the sand. If she were going, she’d be in water shoes and have a decontamination protocol.”
Experts say that assessing shore safety in the aftermath of the Palisades blaze is especially difficult because the situation — a massive urban wildfire that pushed a significant volume of toxic waste into the sea, then back onto the land — is unprecedented. There are no established benchmarks for many fire-related contaminants, so conclusive reporting can’t be attained. Mara Dias, senior manager of the water quality initiative at Surfrider Foundation, explains that hazard criteria “for substances like heavy metals and combustion-related chemicals are incomplete or inconsistent.”
Post-fire testing has already been a lightning-rod issue. In February, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration went public with an appeal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had declined to fund the analysis of contaminated soil as part of the debris removal process — a standard practice in the past after similar disasters. “Without adequate soil testing,” the director of Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services wrote to FEMA, “contaminants caused by the fire can remain undetected” and “potentially jeopardize groundwater and surface water quality.”
Affected shore sediment can’t easily be remedied. For one, as with asbestos, disturbing it can increase the public hazard. For another, removal is its own problem since area beaches are already sand-starved, narrower now than they were a decade ago. Sifting and scraping toxic particles would only further the ongoing coastal erosion, which is its own climate change impact.
Nicole Mooradian, a spokesperson at the county’s Department of Beaches and Harbors, reflects that right now decision-making is about personal risk tolerance. “Would I be building a sandcastle at Will Rogers or Topanga? Maybe not,” she says. “But as you go farther south, there’s less debris coming ashore” — nails, screws, broken glass, twisted metal — “and the overall quality of the sediment improves.”
For her part, Heal the Bay’s Quinn thinks beachgoers should be “pretty safe while staying on the dry sand” south of Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Still, she adds, “families should take extra precautions wherever they go.”
This story appears in the April 2025 Sustainability digital issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to see the rest of the issue.
