Place your bets

If you live in West Fresno, will you really die younger? Will you actually get asthma, cancer, heart disease or other serious health problems?

The science is not intended to make such individual predictions, says John Capitman, executive director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at Fresno State. It is not a health assessment, which goes into far more depth and history of a patient.

"I'm looking at the big shape of the iceberg," he said, "not little pieces of it."

Scientists say they are looking at risk -- the odds that something may happen. The risks are higher in places such as West Fresno and Kettleman City, but lower in the Woodward Park area of Fresno.

In his 2012 "Place Matters" study, Capitman said he calculated mortality rates in each Valley ZIP code. He also included such details as income, ethnicity, education and pollution exposure.

But what if some aspect of lifestyle, such as diet, could account for the early mortality?

Capitman said it would be hard to make that case. The repeating patterns in the places with the highest early mortality suggest something more than lifestyle problems.

"We saw communities of color, immigrants, low income, high exposure to air pollution, clusters along Highway 99, asthma," he said. "So are they all eating the wrong things? I don't think so."

Life expectancy in West Fresno's ZIP code is 69 years old or less, according to Capitman's study. Life expectancy in the more affluent Woodward Park ZIP code is up to 90 years old.

In the state's CalEnviroScreen document, the contrasts between the two are just as striking. The pollution burden in West Fresno is rated more than three times higher.

The populations are near the same size -- 41,087 in West Fresno and 45,191 in Woodward Park, state EPA shows. But there are vast differences in education, birth weights, poverty, ethnicity and asthma rates.

One dramatic example of the differences: pesticide applications. Located in an urban-farming transition area, West Fresno ranks in the 90th percentile for such chemicals statewide. Amid rows of suburban homes around northeast Fresno, the Woodward Park ZIP code ranks in the 23rd percentile.

There are objections and doubts about the way the state is presenting this information, especially about pesticides.

The California Farm Bureau Federation last month wrote a letter to the state EPA, saying the screening tool makes it look as though pesticide use equates to 100% exposure.

"These pesticides have the strictest application and use regulations (buffer zones, worker safety clothing requirements, restricted entry intervals, etc.) of any pesticide applications nationwide," wrote Cynthia Cory, the Farm Bureau group's director of environmental affairs.

But the tool is intended only as a screening device, said John Faust, of the state EPA's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The EPA is not assessing blame or indicating the level of exposure, he said.

The agency does not have complete information on exposures to such chemicals, Faust said. But the screening is important because it shows where people might be vulnerable to such chemicals.

"We're finding out where people use chemicals as a way to get at the question of where exposures are taking place," said Faust.

West Fresno's fight

Mary Curry says everyone in West Fresno knows someone in the community with asthma. She has it. The CalEnviroScreen draft document shows West Fresno's emergency room visits for asthma rank in the 98th percentile -- among the highest in the state.