The Brief

Is it safe to do yard work? Should I test my house for asbestos? How can I know whether schools and parks are safe? These are questions hundreds of Tustin residents still don't have clear answers to more than a month after a fire torched a massive World War II-era hangar.

As the 17-story tall blimp hangar burned, testing by public health officials and asbestos experts showed the fire sent asbestos, lead, and other toxins spewing into the surrounding community. Debris from the fire was reported more than three miles from the site, according to county documents obtained by LAist.

Officials say air quality tests in recent weeks have shown no cause for concern, and specialized remediation crews continue to clean up asbestos-laden debris from the former military base and in the surrounding community.

The status of ash and soot is less certain — private testing inside some residents' homes has found asbestos and lead. Officials have not publicly released any test results from ash or soil since the early days of the fire.

Without access to more data and without a long-term strategy for testing, some residents say they don't feel safe.

"If I could, I would move tomorrow," Sean Storm, a Tustin resident, told LAist in a phone interview. Storm lives in the Columbus Square neighborhood, right across the street from the fire-gutted hangar, with his wife and four young kids.

He said his grandfather died from cardiac arrest after long-term exposure to asbestos. "His lungs were completely deteriorated from it," Storm said. "The doctor told us when he was dying it's like a small razor blade that just cuts you over and over with every breath."

Now Storm fears that asbestos-laden dust and ash from the fire could linger undetected in the grass and mulch that covers nearby parks and common areas in his neighborhood. "You're always going to wonder, am I putting my children at risk of a health factor later down the road?"

LAist interviewed and requested information from local, state and federal officials, and outside experts, about the post-fire recovery efforts and residents' health and safety concerns.

Many questions remain at least partially unanswered, but here's what we found out, including links to key documents and websites.

The historic blimp hangar, at right, seen as it burned on Nov. 7, 2023.

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Jae C. Hong

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Associated Press

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What’s known about potentially toxic building materials in the hangar?

Multiple assessments carried out in recent decades on the now-destroyed hangar and the other, nearly identical, blimp hangar nearby have found that asbestos and lead paint were used extensively throughout their construction.

Asbestos was present in roofing materials, wall panels, pipe insulation and floor tiles, according to a 2019 report. Some of this asbestos was "friable," meaning it breaks or crumbles easily and therefore poses a greater risk of being inhaled, which can cause long-term health consequences.

The wood that makes up the bulk of the construction was treated for fire-resistance with a product called Minalith. Chris Dunne, a Navy spokesperson, told LAist in an email that samples of the treated wood were analyzed in the past and found to contain "detectable concentrations of aluminum, arsenic, boron, barium, calcium, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, nickel, phosphorus, lead, silicon, and zinc."

In the days after the fire first broke out on Nov. 7, air quality officials detected lead and arsenic in the smoke plume, but nowhere else, which Orange County Public Health Officer Regina Chinsio-Kwong told LAist was "reassuring."

She said her office also tested for lead at Legacy Magnet Academy and Heritage Elementary on the heaviest days of smoke and did not detect elevated levels. The two schools are located within a mile from the hangar that burned.

Oladele Ogunseitan, a public health professor at UC Irvine, told us the information about chemicals in the wood was "concerning."

"So far, the data which has been shared shows very low levels of these toxicants, but it is hard to tell the amount released into the air during the early hours of the fire igniting," Ogunseitan wrote in an email to LAist. That's because air quality testing for asbestos and other potential toxins didn't take place until the afternoon of Nov. 7 — about 12 hours after the fire began, according to public documents.

Veterans Sports Park, across the street from where the hangar burned, reopened on Dec. 13, more than a month after the fire broke out.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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What’s known about air and soil quality in adjacent communities?

Here's what testing in the community has shown:

• The day after the fire broke out, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) detected asbestos in debris and ash falling on the surrounding community. Samples of debris collected from around the hangar detected up to 37% asbestos.  
• A mobile air monitoring device deployed by AQMD on the day the fire broke out and for several subsequent days found elevated levels of arsenic and lead inside the area of the smoke plume. However, the majority of results showed no elevated levels of heavy metals, according to public officials and documents. 
• After the first week of the fire, which burned through Dec. 1, air quality testing has not shown elevated levels of asbestos, lead, arsenic or other heavy metals. 

You can see the latest air quality reports and results from early testing on the city's website. Reports of particulate matter, a standard measure of air pollution, are posted daily on the city's website. Currently, air quality is being tested at 30 monitors around the hangar site and throughout the community by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Officials we spoke with say asbestos has been detected primarily in solid pieces of debris from the fire. They say that’s why the city’s cleanup response has focused on removing that debris from the community.

"Right now, at least, we think that the fallout, the fines [fine particulate matter], the soot from the plume probably was not as big a problem," Ben Castellana, on-scene coordinator for the EPA, told LAist in an interview late last week.

"But certainly the debris, the large pieces of the hanger that landed in the community, those needed to be removed as quickly as possible."

Chinsio-Kwong, the Orange County health officer, told LAist that all of the data collected by public health and environmental officials in recent weeks "has been reassuring."

Many residents have asked health officials to do more testing of soil and dirt in communities adjacent to the fire — or, if testing has already occurred, to share it with the community. (A spokesperson for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control told LAist they had information to share. We will update this story as soon as we learn more.)

Storm, the Tustin resident, noted the extensive measures being taken to secure the soil and ash immediately around the hangar. Tustin hangar fire cleanup crews applied a plastic substance to the soil around the burnt structure early this month to prevent asbestos from getting kicked up.

"If you're saying the dirt on the opposite side of the street is not safe, then how is the dirt on my side of the street safe?" he asked.

The EPA is monitoring air quality around the perimeter of the former military base and in multiple locations in the surrounding community.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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What’s known about air and soil quality in nearby schools?

According to county documents, in the days after the fire broke out, asbestos-laden debris was detected at Tustin schools, including at Hicks Canyon Elementary, which is about three miles from the burn site, and at Tustin High School, which is two miles from the site.

All Tustin Unified schools were closed for several days starting on Nov. 9. Most schools were reopened by Nov. 15 after clearance from the district-contracted asbestos consultant.

Chinsio-Kwong, the public health officer, said air quality authorities read up on toxic materials in the building when the fire broke out and consequently, tested the air for a broad range of heavy metals and volatile organic compounds.

At Heritage Elementary School, which was open during the first two days of the fire, Chinsio-Kwong said certified asbestos consultants took air samples and dust samples using a technique called micro-vacuuming to test for asbestos. Those tests came back negative, she said, adding that she believed they were conducted in heavily trafficked areas of the school.

Parents of students at the school, including Storm, have asked for details about the testing, including how much of the school has been tested and whether outdoor surfaces and playground equipment have been tested.

Storm said he was concerned safety issues may linger if “classroom window seals and door frames and carpet in every single classroom” haven't been tested.

Chinsio-Kwong said she didn't have precise details about the testing. The Tustin Unified School District has not responded to LAist's multiple requests for interviews and/or comment since Dec. 5.

At a community meeting on Dec. 7, Tustin school board trustee Allyson Muñiz Damikolas echoed Chinsio-Kwong, saying that preliminary testing at Heritage and Legacy, which are both still closed, was "encouraging," but she said the district did not yet have final results.

As for when the students at Heritage and Legacy might go back, Chinsio-Kwong said she won't recommend reopening those schools until the work to take down the hangar doors and adjacent structures is complete and the resulting dust and debris is secured, "so that once kids return to school, they can freely run around outside instead of being indoors."

That work is not expected to be completed until later this month. So far, the hangar doors have been lowered. Work to remove the "pillbox" structures that framed the doors started Tuesday, according to the city's latest update.

Work to lower the doors of the hangar finished on Dec. 11. This image was taken Dec. 7, when the work was beginning.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Did ash and debris contaminate homes?

According to county documents, some 10,000 homes were affected by the hangar fire in the cities of Tustin, Irvine and Santa Ana.

Public agencies have not tested inside of people's homes affected by the fire. But some residents have paid to get their own testing done. Lana Clay-Monaghan, a Tustin resident, has publicly shared an informal survey she spearheaded of residents near the fire.

Of the 19 residents who said they had indoor testing done by a certified asbestos contractor, nine reported results showing the presence of asbestos. Chinsio-Kwong, the public health official, told LAist one resident who took the survey had emailed her the results of her home test. Chinsio-Kwong said was still working with experts to understand exactly what to take away from the results.

Castellana, the EPA coordinator, said a resident had also shared home testing results with him. But Castellana said the results lacked important details. They didn't include the lab report or specify the detection limit used and therefore don’t “really answer a lot of questions."

"If I test for asbestos in my house, for example, you're probably going to find a fiber or two," Castellana said. "It's naturally occurring, it's in a lot of manufactured products, both in our houses and building materials, as well as cars. … So, it's all over in our environment. And that's not to say it also hasn't come from the [hangar] site.”

Castellana said he hoped asbestos consultants hired by residents would give thorough information about their test results, including whether their home is safe.

Asbestos consultants are required to be certified by the state of California. You can check whether a consultant has up-to-date certification on the website of the state Department of Industrial Relations. You can also look up contractors to see whether they're certified to perform asbestos-related work.

Clay-Monaghan said she and her family, including two toddlers, moved out of their home after it tested positive for asbestos and lead.

"We had to make the difficult and expensive decision to remove ourselves from that environment," she said. She told LAist she hopes to move back after her home is fully remediated.

What are the health risks associated with asbestos and lead?

Exposure to asbestos can cause some forms of cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute, and usually emerges decades after the initial exposure. Health risks increase with heavier and/or longer-term exposure.

Smoking severely increases the risk of developing cancer for those exposed to asbestos. "So the major lesson that I would want to impart to all the residents and children of the area is don't smoke," said Richard Castriotta, a pulmonologist at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.

Exposure to lead is especially dangerous for children under the age of 6. Even small amounts can cause long-term damage to the brain and nervous system, according to the O.C. Health Care Agency. Blood testing is the only way to determine whether a child has lead poisoning.

An empty park in the Columbus Square neighborhood, which was hardest hit by the fire, on Dec. 1, 2023. All city parks were open as of Dec. 13.

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Should I clean my house and/or yard?

Outside

Chinsio-Kwong said that if a resident's yard has been inspected and remediated by a certified asbestos contractor, it should be OK to mow the lawn and do yard work. If you still need help from a certified contractor, contact the city's hotline: 714-426-2444 or report the debris through the city's online portal.

"As long as there's no longer any debris, then technically, if they were given the green light, they should be able to return to landscaping activities and mowing and leaf blowing," she said.

Castriotta, the pulmonologist, said mowing the lawn shouldn't be a problem since most electric lawn mowers collect grass directly into a bag. He said wearing an N95 mask while doing yard work would significantly decrease the risk of exposure.

"They have to live their lives," Castriotta said of residents. "If there's a chance of the ash being around in an inhalational form, then an N95 mask will protect you."

If a resident is still waiting for the city's asbestos contractors to assess their yard and collect fire debris, Chinsio-Kwong said they should wait to do yard work so as not to disturb the debris.

According to the latest update, of the 1,094 debris reports submitted to the city's online portal, some 75% have been remediated and cleared.

But residents have wondered aloud whether this clearance really means their homes are safe since the city's contracted asbestos experts are only picking up large pieces of debris.

At a community meeting last week, Darren Terry told LAist his rain gutters are still full of ash from the fire. He was frustrated homes have been cleared by the city’s asbestos contractors when the roofs, windows, gutters and plants have not been remediated.

Chinsio-Kwong said residents should rinse off or wipe down their window screens and doors if they still contain soot from the fire.

Inside

Chinsio-Kwong recommends that residents whose homes were affected by the Tustin fire use wet wipes to clean surfaces and a vacuum with a HEPA filter on floors.

She told LAist she has been looking for guidance in the residential cleaning studies carried out after the World Trade Center buildings collapsed following the 2001 terrorist attack, spreading toxic dust over streets and into apartments in lower Manhattan.

An EPA study dated November 2008 of different cleaning methods in contaminated homes concluded that wet wiping surfaces and vacuuming the floor — sometimes multiple times, depending on the amount of contamination — "was successful in reducing concentrations to levels below health-based benchmarks."

A separate study found that dusting or sweeping without using water was associated with high numbers of respiratory problems among residents affected by the tower collapses.

Can I run my HVAC system?

Chinsio-Kwong said residents can use their HVAC systems as long as they have a well-maintained filter — the EPA recommends filters rated "MERV 13” or higher to remove fine particulate matter from smoke. Residents may need to replace their HVAC filter or, for help, consult an HVAC technician.

Chinsio-Kwong acknowledged that advice on whether Tustin residents should run their HVAC systems initially wavered in the early days of the fire. She said that's because she was concerned people might not know whether their HVAC system has an updated filter, which is key to safety.

More than 600 disaster remediation workers have been dispatched to clean up fire debris tainted with asbestos on the former military base and in surrounding neighborhoods.

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Is there funding assistance to pay for home testing?

Asbestos

Currently, public agencies are not offering assistance for asbestos testing inside of homes affected by the Tustin hangar fire. At a recent community meeting, Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner said state law prohibited the county from using general taxpayer money to set up a fund for individual homeowners affected by the fire.

"We just don't have a legal right to do that," he said.

Some homeowners told LAist their insurance has paid for testing inside their homes. But, according to Clay-Monaghan's informal survey of residents, nearly three-quarters said they couldn't afford it.

One-quarter of the 1,075 homes in the Columbus Square neighborhood, which was hardest hit by fire debris, are designated for very low- to moderate-income families.

Clay-Monaghan said residents who had paid for testing reported paying around $2,500.

If the state declares the Tustin fire an emergency, it could free up resources for the city and for individuals. Wagner said the state had been "dragging its feet" on a declaration.

Brian Ferguson, spokesperson for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, told LAist in an email earlier this month that the city and county would first have to demonstrate that "effective response is beyond [their] capabilities" in order for the state to step in with aid.

Ferguson said Wednesday there were no additional updates. He did not respond to our request to clarify the damage assessment process.

Initial damage estimates totaled about $31.7 million as of mid-November, according to the emergency management team that coordinated the initial response to the fire. That includes money spent by the county, Tustin Unified School District and city of Tustin.

The final total is likely to be far higher. Last week, Tustin Mayor Austin Lumbard told LAist that the city had committed $30 million of its own funds to date.

Lead

If you’re worried about potential lead in your home from the Tustin fire and have small children, the O.C. Health Care Agency has a program that provides consultation and assistance for environmental investigations. Call 714-567-6220 for more information.

Chinsio-Kwong, the public health officer, said parents concerned that their children may have been exposed to lead should have them tested by a physician.

Crews working to clean up after the Tustin hangar fire.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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What is the status of cleanup on the former military base?

Work finished Monday, Dec. 11, to remove the hangar's 150-ft. tall metal and wooden doors, which were lowered to the ground and will be covered in an adhesive substance designed to keep dust and potentially harmful particulate matter from getting into the surrounding air or soil.

Dunne, the Navy spokesperson, told LAist that the "tackifier" substance, trademarked Gorilla-Snot, is being used to cover debris in the footprint of the destroyed hangar. The Navy does not have plans to spread the tackifier on other parts of the 84-acre former base, he said, but city contractors are cleaning up fire debris on the land.

Asbestos-laden debris collected on the former military base will remain there until the Navy develops a disposal plan.

Some relief for property owners?

The O.C. assessor recently sent a letter to property owners in the vicinity of the fire advising that they could qualify for a temporary value adjustment to their home, meaning lowered property taxes, if they can demonstrate that the fire caused $10,000 or more in damages.

It's unclear how many, if any, homes could meet that threshold. For more information, you can call the county assessor’s office at 714-834-2727.

A room on the second floor of a Camarillo building is quickly filling with smoke. From the far end of the room, flames start to shoot across the ceiling.

While the flames and smoke are real, the danger is not.

This is the Ventura County Fire Department’s new Live Fire Training Complex. A firefighter is controlling the flames and smoke with what looks like a TV remote control.

The $32 million project includes live fire training buildings, a dedicated ladder training prop, and other facilities designed to give firefighters hands-on experience.

"This complex has a 'Class A' combustible burn building, which we are standing in now," said Ventura County Fire Department Training Chief Casey Rosdaile. "The 'Class B' building is propane-fed. This building allows us to train in real fire conditions and real fire behavior. That building (the 'Class B' building) allows us to do a lot more of the operational steps. There's always a gap between the simulated thing and a real thing, and we're trying to limit that as much as possible. That way, when someone trains, they aren't going to be the real thing and say that it's nothing like they practiced."

The buildings are made of concrete, so they won't be affected by the flames and smoke. The smoke kind that's used on movie shoots, so it doesn't leave clothing with the smoky smell like you get from a brush fire.

He added that the new facilities can help train firefighters, as well as other first responders, on ways to deal with a number of emergencies.

"These buildings can host anything from sheriff's operations to (simulated) structure fires, to search and rescue," said Rosdaile. "There are a million things you can do in here. You can train 50 to 60 firefighters at a time, so it really gives us a lot of flexibility."

The two new buildings are just part of the fire department’s fire training complex. It covers 22 acres of land on the southeast side of Camarillo Airport. There are nearly 18,000 square feet of indoor training space, with 32 training rooms.

The dedicated live fire training buildings give firefighters experience with scenarios that were often difficult and time-consuming to create.

"We would light the materials, and let the fire conditions and environment build, to create a realistic training environment, and then send the folks in to extinguish it," said Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner. "Then, we would have to clean it all out, and reset it, and start again. We would get a couple of burns a day done. Now, we're getting multiple burns an hour."

Gardner said it's a complex they've sought to create for years.

"This facility allows us to close the gap between training and reality. This allows us to expose our firefighters to as realistic an environment as we can repetitively, and under safe conditions."

Among the props at the facility is a vehicle chassis equipped with gas lines, which can be ignited, so firefighters can practice fighting those types of fires.

"This is our vehicle prop, and it lets us simulate fire. We can push the fire to different parts of the vehicle, so we can set it in the interior, in the cab, the wheel well, as well as the engine compartment," said Ventura County Fire Department Quartermaster Jake Finley. "It creates a good learning environment, with teachable moments. You can see in the background some of the old vehicles (we used to burn salvaged vehicles), and it was a really intensive process. We couldn't repeat it as quickly."

While the Ventura County Fire Department owns and operates the facility, the goal is for it to be used to train first responders from throughout the region. It’s already hosted firefighters from a number of other agencies in the county, as well as teams from neighboring counties.

When the war with Iran started, one of the top economic concerns globally was the slowdown of oil shipments. But there was another critical export that got stuck in the region when hostilities began: fertilizer.

Before the war, around one-third of the world's fertilizer transported by sea passed through the Strait of Hormuz, according to UN Trade and Development. The waterway has become a shipping chokepoint in recent months.

With the strait closed, fertilizer shipments from the Persian Gulf slumped and prices rose, affecting countries all around the world that import fertilizer. The war also created a global shortage of natural gas, a key component in nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing.

It caused a massive headache for U.S. farmers who were hit with higher fertilizer prices and limited availability just as they were deciding what to plant for the upcoming growing season.

But the costs borne by farmers don't necessarily get passed on to consumers, and food system experts say they're unlikely to have a major impact on the retail prices of fruit and vegetables.

"Consumers are going to see higher food prices come September to January, once harvests start coming in, and the few months thereafter," said Chris Barrett, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University. "Very little of that is going to be directly attributable to fertilizer."

That's because food inflation is generally driven by larger factors affecting multiple parts of the food supply chain, such as fewer workers and high fuel costs.

US farmers are rethinking their plans

About one-third of the fertilizer used by U.S. farmers is imported, according to The Fertilizer Institute, an industry trade group. TFI Vice President of Public Affairs Christopher Glen said little of that comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

"But we get impacted in a big way because the fertilizer market is global," Glen said over email. "Even if those tons from the Mideast aren't coming to the US, they are still tons that have been removed from the market and need to be made up elsewhere. That's where the pressure comes from."

An American Farm Bureau Federation survey released in April reported that 70% of respondents said they couldn't afford all the fertilizer they needed this season.

Some farmers are more vulnerable to price swings than others. Producers of corn and wheat, which rely heavily on fertilizer, can spend around a third of their operating costs on fertilizer alone. Half of the farmers who responded to a survey released by the National Corn Growers Association in early April said they wouldn't apply the full amount of fertilizer to their corn crop this year, due largely to higher costs and limited availability.

Because farmers often secure their fertilizer stores well before a growing season begins, some weren't seriously affected by the price swings created by the war in Iran. (Iran said it closed the Strait of Hormuz shortly after it was attacked by the U.S. and Israel at the end of February. U.S. corn growing season typically begins in April.) But they are worried about the future: corn growers who responded to the survey were twice as concerned about the 2027 corn crop as they were about this year's.

This season, some farmers may opt to plant crops that require less nitrogen fertilizer than corn, such as soy beans, in response to rising costs.

According to USDA data, farmers are expected to plant 95.3 million acres of corn this year, down from 98.8 million acres last year. But the total acreage of soybeans is predicted to rise to 85.4 million acres this year from 81.2 million acres last year.

US grocery prices probably won't take a huge hit

If higher fertilizer costs lead to smaller harvests, that could contribute to modest retail price hikes. A TD Economics analysis estimated that a 2-5% production shortfall in North America could grow food inflation by around 0.1-0.5 percentage points in 2027.

Sponsor MessageBut experts say the costs of the fertilizer shortage will be largely shouldered by farmers.

The amount a farmer spends on fertilizer is a small fraction of the total cost to grow food and get it to grocery store shelves. Just 12 cents of every dollar U.S. consumers spend on food goes to farms, while the rest is received by transportation companies, processors, wholesalers and grocery stores, according to the USDA. And the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service reported that U.S. farms spent around 7% of their budgets on fertilizer, lime and soil conditioners in 2024 (though farmers growing crops more reliant on fertilizer such as corn would spend more).

Additionally, farmers don't have much bargaining power to negotiate with wholesalers for higher crop prices when their operating costs rise, according to Rob Vos, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. "Those buyers will go to other farmers to try and get it cheaper," he said.

But there are factors other than the fertilizer crunch that are more likely to cause food prices to jump. Barrett said the global food industry is facing a "really unpleasant layer cake" of pressures, from tariffs and extreme weather to higher prices on labor, fuel and fertilizer.

"No one of those by itself is especially painful," he said. "But when you add them all up, they become quite painful together."

In parts of Africa and Asia, the effects of the fertilizer shortage could be far worse. Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services, said in April that the reduction of shipments through the Strait of Hormuz may prove "very significant and severe" for poorer countries. Less-developed countries that rely heavily on fertilizer from the Persian Gulf include Sudan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Somalia.

The fertilizer industry is recovering — and may adapt in the process

Some fertilizer prices have begun to fall again in recent weeks, after the U.S. and Iran reached a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz last month.

The Trump administration has also taken steps to lower fertilizer costs for American farmers. This week, Trump temporarily suspended "countervailing duties" on certain phosphate imports, which are added to some imported goods to cancel out subsidies provided by foreign governments.

Still, it will be a while before the fertilizer sector returns to normal. Vos estimated that it could take weeks or months for fertilizer manufacturing plants to come back online and return to previous production levels. If high prices stick around, that could snarl the plans of U.S. farmers preparing to plant cool-season crops this autumn, he added.

Barrett said the trouble with the fertilizer industry has also gotten farmers thinking about how they can protect themselves from these kinds of supply-chain disruptions in the future and looking for other ways to replenish their soil, such as manure, compost and cover crops.

"Just like we're seeing more people interested in electric vehicles because the price of gasoline and diesel has gone up, you see more farmers interested in other ways of replenishing soil nutrients as the price of fertilizer has gone up," he said.

A consequential act of defiance secured tea's place as perhaps the most iconic beverage of America's colonial era.

The Boston Tea Party became an essential ingredient in the recipe for revolution in the following years.

But tea wasn't the only hot beverage with a prominent role in America's fight for independence.

Coffee was an important part of American culture from the start. And coffeehouses were essential, too — serving as hubs for brewing ideas of independence.

As the United States celebrates 250 years, here's what to know about America's early history of coffee.

Colonists were drinking coffee long before the United States existed

Europeans brought coffee with them when they came to America.

"The first documented example of a mortar and pestle used to grind coffee beans was on the Mayflower" in 1620, says historian Michelle Craig McDonald, the author of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States.

"The fact that coffee was present so early is not surprising if you think about it," McDonald says. "A number of those who were on the Mayflower came to North America from Amsterdam, which was a major coffee trading center in Western Europe by the 17th century."

The first coffeehouse in the colonies opened in 1676 in Boston, a century before the U.S. declared independence, she says. Some taverns sold coffee even earlier.

The Boston Tea Party probably wasn't the dramatic turning point toward coffee that some claim

On the night of Dec. 16, 1773, disgruntled colonists boarded three ships moored in Boston Harbor and threw overboard more than 92,000 pounds of tea owned by the British East India Company.

Tensions had been building between the Crown and the colonies over the previous decade, as Britain tried to levy taxes on its colonies to recoup war debts.

The Boston Tea Party protest was targeted at the British government's passing of the Tea Act in 1773, which granted the East India Company a monopoly over tea sales in the colonies. While the British had removed some unpopular taxes in the preceding years, they left tea taxes in place. Colonial merchants were especially upset that the act allowed the East India Company to undercut their tea business.

To build solidarity for their cause of sovereignty, some patriots called on colonialists to swear off tea in favor of coffee. It's why many histories point to the Boston Tea Party as a turning point when Americans switched from mostly drinking tea to mostly coffee. The anti-tea sentiment was immortalized in a founding father's now-famous letter.

In July 1774, John Adams (before he became the second U.S. president) wrote to his wife Abigail, recounting an incident during his travels. After a long day, he asked the proprietor of the house where he was lodging for a cup of tea, provided it was smuggled and free of British taxes.

" 'No sir, said she, we have renounced all Tea in this Place. I cant make Tea, but I'le make you Coffee.' Accordingly I have drank Coffee every Afternoon since, and have borne it very well. Tea must be universally renounced. I must be weaned, and the sooner, the better," Adams wrote.

Despite John Adams claiming a newfound patriotic duty to appreciate coffee, McDonald says colonists had been drinking lots of coffee all along.

She studied advertisements from the 1760s and '70s to estimate how many shops sold coffee versus tea. Even before the Boston Tea Party, she says, "coffee is definitely more broadly available than tea is."

A big reason? It was cheaper. "Its price again per pound is significantly less, which tells you about its availability, its accessibility to drinkers."

Historians say it's hard to definitively compare tea with coffee consumption, though, as official records from before America gained independence were inconsistent.

And smuggling was rampant, making official records even less reliable.

"There is a vast amount of smuggling," says Joyce Chaplin, a professor of early American history at Harvard University. "So they're not paying formal duties on tea that they get from the Dutch. They're probably not paying formal duties on coffee from the French Caribbean."

And Chaplin notes that people who loudly proclaimed a new appreciation for coffee over tea weren't always doing what they said. It could have been political pandering. "I do not drink tea that comes via the East India Company," she posits someone of the era saying. "But, you know, other sources are fine. Ditto for the coffee."

Coffeehouses were a hub for revolutionary ideas 

In the colonial era, coffeehouses were hotbeds for seditious thought — where people planned acts of revolution.

"Coffeehouses are kind of famous for being places where people think and plot things," says Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World.

A coffeehouse called the Green Dragon served as one of the locations for planning the Boston Tea Party. Years earlier, the Old London Coffeehouse in Philadelphia was a meeting place for strategizing responses to another British tax, the Stamp Act of 1765.

In Britain, coffeehouses were nicknamed "penny universities," Pendergrast says: "because for a penny you could go and learn a whole lot by sitting around in a coffeehouse and discussing everything." The same attitude traveled across the Atlantic.

Early American coffeehouses would commonly have city business directories, libraries of newspapers and currency exchange information. People could get maritime insurance there or buy things at auction.

"There's a reason why coffeehouses become places of colonial protest … in the 1760s, in the 1770s, and it's because it is the place where traders and merchants tended to gather," historian McDonald says. "That's where they heard about the economics of the day."

Taverns were more likely than coffeehouses to have rooms for rent and stables for travelers' horses. They were also more likely to have food.

Interestingly enough, coffeehouses could serve alcohol and taverns could serve coffee.

But the vibes at each were different. While women and men could "riotously drink together" in taverns, coffeehouses often didn't allow women, according to Chaplin of Harvard.

"The sense was the coffeehouse was the place where you had a clear head — to argue about politics, to find out what was going on in the business world, to cut a business deal," she says. "Whereas taverns were places where, in a sense, you refueled."

Still, she says, the lines between the two "weren't completely clear."

The cost of America's revolutionary drink 

Coffee (and tea for that matter) was part of a growing globalization of trade around this time.

Much of the coffee in the colonies was grown in the Caribbean, while tea came from China.

Supply was up and coffee was easier than ever to drink. "Trade and frankly, imperialism, are making it possible for … colonial products to be produced and transferred to other parts of the world in greater and greater quantities," says Chaplin.

As a result, by the time of the American Revolution, both coffee and tea were in reach for many common people. "They're both becoming affordable luxuries," Chaplin says.

Fancy coffee and tea paraphernalia were also part of this increasingly global market. Middle and upper-class people would have wanted special implements for drinking these beverages and a place to drink it. That meant they needed wood for coffee tables, silver for coffeepots, and porcelain for teapots.

"These two beverages are encouraging people to consume all kinds of new stuff," says Chaplin. "The mahogany that comes out of the Caribbean, the china coming out of China, silver that is mined principally in South and Central America and processed in a lot of the parts of the world."

There's a dark side to coffee's history, too. The plantations that supplied the crop ran on the labor of enslaved people. By 1790, half of the world's coffee was being grown in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, in what is today Haiti, Pendergrast says, where slaves were routinely mistreated, raped and murdered.

The Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, is infamous for a contradiction. It proclaimed that "all men are created equal," but failed to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of enslaved people living in America at the time.

Coffee carried a similar contradiction. The beverage that fueled conversations that inspired America's fight for independence — centered on the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — depended on enslavement.

"Coffee had this paradoxical effect, that it did promote revolutionary thought," Pendergrast says. "But it was also grown by slaves."

Wearing gloves and a KN95 mask, Emmanuel Carrera Ruedas hunkered down near a storm drain, just steps away from the smoldering Lineage warehouse fire, as he filmed himself pointing to what he described as insulation and foam flowing into the drain.

“The thing about this water is that it all gets dumped straight into the L.A. River,” Carrera Ruedas, of Cudahy, told his Instagram followers in a June 22 reel.

In the past two weeks, Carrera Ruedas has spent evenings gathering water samples outside Lineage and from the L.A. River as he and other community scientists are partnering with experts from UCLA and Columbia University to learn what’s in the runoff. Samples will soon be sent to a lab in New York.

“For far too long, the river has just been a drainage, a dumping site for companies,” said Carrera Ruedas, 27, who often encounters toads, birds and fish inhabiting its ecosystem.

“There is life in there,” he told Boyle Heights Beat. “We’re all in proximity to the river, and that’s kind of the vein that runs through the city that really connects us all.”

Community-led testing

Since the Lineage fire ignited June 17 in Boyle Heights, residents, environmental advocates and researchers have taken it upon themselves to find out what’s in the air and water. They’ve launched their own sampling efforts, seeking answers about what people have been breathing and contaminants that may have entered the L.A. River.

The community-led testing comes as residents have reported eye irritation, nausea and headaches while questioning whether the government has done enough to capture the fire’s environmental and public health impacts.

Those concerns are especially alarming in Boyle Heights, East L.A. and neighboring Southeast L.A. communities, where neighbors have long faced disproportionate pollution burdens.

Crews navigate around piles of debris and puddles of water on the eastern edge of the Lineage warehouse as they begin cleanup efforts on June 25, 2026.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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An estimated 31,700 workers, about 81% of whom are Latino, live in the county and city zones where a smoke advisory was issued, according to new data from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute. They work in health care, manufacturing and food service industries. About half of the workers earn $3,333 or less a month, below L.A. County’s “very low income” threshold.

The area also experiences diesel pollution levels three times the county average, as well as higher rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease-related emergency department visits, according to UCLA. Nearly 10,000 households in the area lack air conditioning.

“This is not only an air quality emergency but also a worker and environmental justice issue,” UCLA said.

Behind the push for environmental justice

For years, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice has shed light on how Latinos on the Eastside often bear the brunt of the region’s pollution and climate disasters, such as the East L.A. oil spill in late May that dumped nearly 25,000 gallons of crude oil onto streets and into the L.A. River. For the organization, “We are just trying to breathe” is a common phrase.

“Something I’ve told many people over a long period of time is, ‘We’re not polar bears. We’re not whales.’ Nobody is coming to save us. We have to step up and defend ourselves,” said mark! Lopez with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice.

Antonia Castillo, 73, helps her grandson Aiden Velez put on a mask near their Boyle Heights home.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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East Yard members opted to take air samples themselves, dissatisfied with the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s assessment of the fire’s air-quality impacts. They placed sorbent tubes, which Lopez described as passive air monitors, outside nearby homes for about seven days. Soon, they’ll send the findings to a Columbia University lab with the help of UC Irvine.

What officials have done so far

South Coast AQMD said it conducted “mobile monitoring” during the first two days of the fire that found “significantly elevated concentrations” of particulate matter. The agency then deployed particulate matter monitors at Eastman Avenue Elementary and Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School that provide “near-real time exposure information.” AQMD noted that the L.A. Fire Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted their own monitoring, while third-party contractor Onterris has continued monitoring during the cleanup phase.

AQMD also observed smoke impacts throughout the region, issuing a particle pollution advisory in English and Spanish that remained in effect through June 24.

What's next and lingering questions

Meanwhile, Lopez said more sampling is necessary, and he questioned the effectiveness of efforts by Lineage, AQMD and LAFD. He and other advocates criticized public statements from officials, including Mayor Karen Bass’ assurances that “the air is not dangerous,” even as residents were reporting feeling sick. He also took aim at LAFD Chief Jaime Moore’s statements that ammonia was not toxic to individuals unless they had respiratory issues or came in direct contact with it. East Yard also called for evacuations in the area.

“It feels like at the city and county level they don’t currently have the capacity to really handle this situation,” Lopez added. “I think it really requires state and federal intervention to make sure that the cleanup and restoration isn’t mismanaged.”

Yoshira “Yoshi” Ornelas Van Horne, an exposure scientist and assistant professor with the UCLA Fielding School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, said the Lineage fire is exposing how little is done to “respond to public health emergencies and disasters” in communities like Boyle Heights and East L.A., areas “that have so often been referred to as environmental injustice communities.”

Residents and community organizations like East Yard, Ornelas Van Horne said, “are always the ones having to respond.”

“They’re relying on each other. They’re relying on their networks and their organizing power to be able to do that on the ground sampling.”

Ornelas Van Horne reached out to colleagues at Columbia’s Multi-Element Trace Analysis Laboratory in New York after she learned of the sampling taking place and of community concerns about the runoff making its way down to the L.A. River.

Those samples will be analyzed for heavy metals like cadmium, lead and arsenic, she said.

The L.A. County Public Works Department, according to the Los Angeles Times, deployed three containment booms on the L.A. River and continued to monitor the water as it made its way to the ocean.

Carrera Ruedas began collecting water samples on the third day of the fire. He said he took the first sample from the L.A. River, about 100 meters from the spout where it spilled out. The second was taken from outside Lineage. He has amassed dozens of samples since then.

Cudahy sits alongside the lower L.A. River, and after the fire, Carrera Ruedas recalled a “heavy stench that affected people in our community.” The trash he saw in the river was the foam and insulation that came from Lineage, he said.

“It really pissed me off, just to see all this trash go in there and nobody doing anything about it,” said Carrera Ruedas, who also serves as the parks and environmental justice commissioner for Cudahy.

The L.A. River, Carrera Ruedas said, is “part of our ecosystem.”

“This is not just affecting me. This affects everybody else around me. This affects people who love the beach, people who just want our water systems clean,” he said.