New US rules aim to tackle toxic air pollution from steelmakers
New Environmental Protection Agency rules aim to tackle toxic air pollution from U.S. steelmakers by limiting pollutants such as mercury, benzene and lead, which have long poisoned the air in the neighborhoods surrounding the plants.
The rules target pollutants released from steel mills’ coke ovens. Gas from the furnaces creates an individual cancer risk in the air around steel mills of 50 in 1,000,000, which public health advocates say is dangerous to children and people with underlying health conditions.
The chemicals don’t travel far from the plant, but advocates say they have been devastating to public health in low-income “gated” neighborhoods around steel mills, and represent an environmental justice issue.
“People have long faced significant health risks, such as cancer, from coke oven pollution,” said Patrice Simms, Earthjustice vice president for Healthy Communities. The rules are “critical to protect communities and workers near coke ovens.”
Coke ovens are chambers that heat coal to produce coke, a hard deposit used to make steel. The gas produced by the furnaces is classified by the EPA as a known human carcinogen and contains a mix of hazardous chemicals, heavy metals and volatile compounds.
Many of the chemicals are linked to serious health problems, including severe eczema, respiratory problems and digestive injuries.
Amid mounting evidence of the gas’s toxicity in recent years, the EPA has done little to rein in pollution, critics say. Environmental groups have pushed for new boundaries and better monitoring, and Earthjustice sued the EPA in 2019 over the issue.
Coke ovens have particularly plagued cities in the industrial regions of the upper Midwest Alabama. In Detroit, the focus is on a coking plant that has been violating air quality standards thousands of times for a decade ongoing lawsuits that claims sulfur dioxide produced by coke oven gas has sickened nearby residents in a predominantly black neighborhood, though the new rules do not cover this pollutant.
The rules, published Friday, require testing around the plants, and if a contaminant is found to exceed the new limits, steelmakers must identify the source and take action to reduce levels.
The rules also remove loopholes that the industry previously used to avoid reporting emissions, such as exempting emissions limits during outages.
Tests outside a Pittsburgh plant operated by US Steel, one of the nation’s largest producers, found concentrations of benzene, a carcinogen, were 10 times higher than the new limits. A spokesperson for US Steel told the newspaper Allegheny Front the rules would be virtually impossible to implement and would have “unprecedented costs and potentially unintended negative consequences for the environment.”
“The costs would be unprecedented and unknown because there are no proven control technologies for certain hazardous air pollutants,” the spokesperson said.
Adrienne Lee, an attorney for Earthjustice, told the Guardian that the rule is based on industry data provided to the EPA, and she noted that the rules generally will not reduce emissions but will prevent exceedances.
“I find it hard to believe that it will be difficult to comply with the limits,” Lee said.