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standing-room-only audience haspacked the Avalon Municipal Building on a rain-soaked Aprilevening to hear Allegheny County Health Department officialsexplain the latest consent decree to correct air quality violationsat the coke works across the river. It’s a tough crowd.Most live in the north boroughs near the Shenango,

Inc. plant. They know the long history of enforcementactions against it that were followed by fixes that werefollowed by new violations. They’re aware of the healthrisks that air pollutants pose, and studies that suggest

their rates of disease are high. They speak in voices that express concernand fear, frustration and anger.No one is more emphatic than Ken Holmes. “They have a lot of prob-

lems at that plant. I’ve been here for 10 years. I used to go to meetings andI’d hear the same issues I’m hearing now,” the Bellevue resident says in avoice that does not require a microphone. “Their problems are becoming

the community’s problems, and that shouldn’t be the case. “You’re the Health Department. Why are you not shut-

ting them down? We don’t need to know the mechanics oftheir operation. We already know there’s a lot of poisoncoming out of this plant, and people are suffering. Whyhaven’t they been shut down?”History suggests that, barring a catastrophic inci-

dent, closing the coke plant won’t be given serious consid-eration—that the enforcement model used almost alwaysgives plants like Shenango a chance to correct pollution-causing problems when they arise, regardless of how oftenthat occurs. >>

Is better good enough?

Despite improvement, the region is losing the race for cleaner air

written by jeffery fraser • photographs by martha rial

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worrisome neighbor Emissions from the Shenango, Inc. coke works is a subject of growing concern amongresidents of Allegheny County's north boroughs. The 52-year-old plant, located five miles northwest of downtown Pitts-burgh on the Ohio River's Neville Island, bakes coal to produce 350,000 tons of coke a year to fuel steelmaking inMichigan. Recent court-ordered improvements are the latest attempt to curb chronic air quality violations that havemade Shenango one of the single-largest pollution sources in the county.

So what is the best environmental performance that can bereasonably expected from local coke plants? “It’s a dirty process,”Thompson says. “They’re in river valleys where there are frequenttemperature inversions. What we can only do is have them meetthe minimum requirements. I think that’s the best-case scenario,where they are in compliance.”In the latest case against Shenango, the plant was found to

violate air quality regulations on more than 300 days during a 432-day period that ended last Sept. 30. Violations were detected atseveral points susceptible to fugitive emissions, such as the lidsthrough which coal is fed into the ovens and where hot coke ispushed from the ovens into waiting rail cars. The precise content and concentration of those emissions are

unclear. Regulators know the type of air pollutants generallyfound in coke plant emissions. But violations at coke works largelyinvolve emissions that inspectors are able to see. Estimates of con-centration are based on the opacity of those visible emissions. “People are sometimes surprised at how imprecise air pollu-

tion control emissions calculations are,” says Joe Osborne, legaldirector of the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), anenvironmental advocacy group that filed a citizens’ lawsuit againstShenango over the plant’s recent violations. “Almost never do youhave a situation when all of the pollution comes from a singlestack and there is a continuous emissions monitor that can con-vert it into concentration and mass and tell us exactly how muchpollution the plant is generating every year.”The Health Department uses more precise instruments to

measure air quality in eight locations throughout the county. Onesuch monitor is in Avalon, downwind of the Shenango coke works. The average for PM2.5 concentrations measured by that

monitor was above current federal limits for a two-year periodending in 2012. But the most recent year shows levels dippingbelow the annual limit of 12 micrograms per cubic centimeter. It’sa welcome development, one that Shenango officials feel is tosome degree related to improvements made over the last six years.“We understand the PM2.5 monitor at Avalon has been trendingdownward since DTE has taken over the plant and we believewe’ve contributed to that,” says Michael Best, plant manager.Environmental groups point to the hundreds of air quality

violations reported just last year as evidence of lingering problemsat a plant with a long, troubled past. “If they invested as muchthought and energy into the environmental performance of theplant as they have in their public relations campaign, there proba-bly wouldn’t be a problem there,” says GASP’s Osborne.

Better, but still behind

nyone who remembers or anyonewho has seen photographs of Pittsburgh at the peakof its industrial might knows the skies today aredramatically cleaner. Gone is the heavy smoke thatshrouded the city and hung in the valleys. Gone areall but a handful of the steel and coke mills that hadbeen prolific sources of air pollution, replaced by a

more diverse, cleaner economy driven by education, medicine andfinance. Air quality data also show recent improvement in levels of fine

particulates and other pollutants that are not readily visible—

Moreover, Holmes’s belief that the air pollution he can seeand smell is a serious problem places him squarely in the minorityof southwestern Pennsylvania residents, recent surveys suggest.Long after the dense smoke of heavy industry dissipated with

the thinning of the mills that crowded its river valleys, the regionstill struggles to meet federal health-based air quality standards fortwo widespread air pollutants, fine particulates and ground-levelozone.As a result, Pittsburgh and the rest of southwestern Pennsyl-

vania find themselves on the wrong end of air quality rankings ofU.S. cities and regions. And that signals greater local health risks,tarnishes Pittsburgh’s “most livable city” image, poses a competi-tive disadvantage in attracting talent, business and visitors andbegs the question why outcries such as those heard in Avalon thatevening are the exception in a region where breathing substandardair spans three centuries.

‘It’s a dirty process’

ometime last summer, county airquality inspectors noticed mounting problems withemissions coming from several points throughout theShenango coke plant, which has operated for 52 yearson heavily industrialized Neville Island in the OhioRiver, five miles downstream of downtown Pittsburgh.The violations led the Health Department Air Quality

Program to double inspections to build a case against the cokeworks, which has been owned by Ann Arbor, Mich.-based DTEEnergy Services since 2008.

Shenango is the smaller of the two coke works in the county,operating one battery of 56 ovens, which each year produce350,000 tons of coke, the chief fuel used in steelmaking. Thecoke is sent by rail to the Severstal-North America steel mill inDearborn, Mich. The nine batteries at the U.S. Steel Clairtonplant along the Monongahela River, the nation’s largest cokeworks, turn out 4.7 million tons of coke per year that fuel thecompany’s steel mills.The basic recipe for making coke is fairly straightforward:

Fill an oven with coal. Bake at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for 18hours. Remove and douse with water to cool. It’s also a recipe for hazardous byproducts. Baking coal

produces fine particulates, known as PM2.5, a dangerous air pollu-tant, and air toxins known or suspected of causing cancer andother serious health effects, such as benzene, xylene and toluene.Benzene and others have market value and are captured and sold.All are regulated to protect the public from their harmful effects.For coke plants that bake coal around the clock, harnessing

those emissions has proven to be an operational and engineeringchallenge so steep that the two in Allegheny County have not beenable to do so to the degree necessary to avoid repeatedly violatingair quality regulations. Not surprisingly, they’re among the largestsingle-source emitters of air pollution in the county. Even after U.S. Steel spent $500 million on a new battery of

environmentally advanced coke ovens, emissions were found to behigh enough to violate air quality regulations in places where theovens are fed with coal. The problem, apparently related to a de-sign issue with the battery completed just last year, will likely re-sult in an order to resolve it, says Jim Thompson, AlleghenyCounty Health Department deputy director of environmentalhealth.

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from coal to cokeopposite: Piles of coal before processing.left: Coke is pushed from the ovens into aquench car, which transports it to be del-uged with water and cooled. inset: Thebag house captures dust and particulate matter from the process andhas been targeted for improved pollutantcontainment at Shenango, Inc.

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Is better good enough?

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“ If they invested as much thought and energy into the environmentalperformance of the plant as they have in their public relationscampaign, there probably wouldn’t be a problem there.— joe osborne, gasp legal director

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he u.s . environmentalProtection Agency classifiesparts or all of the seven-countyPittsburgh Metropolitan Statis-tical Area to be in nonattain-

ment of health-based limits for threemajor air pollutants it regulates: fine par-ticulates, or PM2.5, ground-level ozoneand sulfur dioxide.

Places are designated nonattainmentareas for failing to meet air quality stan-dards over a period of three consecutiveyears. Here’s more about the pollutantsthat remain a problem in the region:

PM2.5 These particles are 30 times smaller

than the diameter of a human hair andcan get deep into the lungs, even theblood stream. The biggest sources ofPM2.5 are those that burn fossil fuels ona large scale, including power plants,steel and coke works, and mobile sourcessuch as cars, diesel trucks and buses.Smaller sources include wood stoves andrestaurant fryers.

Scientific evidence links short- andlong-term PM2.5 to reduced lung func-tion, chronic bronchitis and prematuredeath. It also aggravates asthma and lungdisease. Even short-term exposure raisesthe risk of heart attacks and arrhythmiasamong people with heart disease.

Ground-level ozoneGround-level ozone is formed in sun-

light when hydrocarbons, such as thosein car exhaust, interact with nitrogen ox-ides. Gasoline and diesel vehicles arechief sources. A component of smog, it ismost likely to reach unhealthy levels onhot sunny days in urban environments.

Breathing ozone can worsenasthma, bronchitis and emphysema,reduce lung function and inflamethe lining of the lungs. Repeated ex-posure can permanently scar lungtissue. Even relatively low levels ofozone can cause problems. Most

at risk are people with lung disease,those who are active outdoors, olderadults and children, whose lungs arestill developing.

Sulfur dioxideSulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of a

group of sulfur oxide gases. The highestamounts of SO2 emissions are producedwhen fossil fuels are burned at powerplants and other industrial facilities.These emissions pose their own healthrisks, but can also react with othercompounds in the air to form PM2.5, oneof the most dangerous and widespreadair pollutants.

Short-term exposure to SO2 hasbeen linked to a range of respiratoryproblems, including bronchoconstrictionand increased asthma symptoms. Peoplewith asthma are at greater risk whenthey are breathing more heavily, such aswhile exercising.

Most of the seven-county PittsburghMSA meets federal SO2 air standards,with the exception being parts ofAllegheny and Beaver counties.

improvements that are the result of technological advances,industry investment, tighter local and national regulatoryefforts, advocacy and economic factors.The Avalon monitor downwind of Shenango was not the

only one in Allegheny County where levels of PM2.5 are trend-ing downward. Concentrations were markedly lower in 2012than in 1997 throughout the county, even within the hottestair pollution hot spot immediately downwind of the U.S. SteelClairton coke works. There, the annual average of PM2.5fell from about 23 micrograms per cubic centimeter to justunder 15.Such improvements and the fact that Pittsburgh simply

looks cleaner carry considerable weight in shaping perceptionsof air quality. Back in 2008, when he was chief executive of Allegheny

County, Dan Onorato railed against an American LungAssociation report that ranked the county and region as the

worst place in the nation for PM2.5 pollution, based on datafrom local air monitors. He labeled the findings a “disservice tosouthwestern Pennsylvania” and questioned the methodologythe nonprofit used to arrive at its conclusions and its motive forpublishing them.“Anybody who’s from here knows if you compare today

with 1955 or 1965 it’s never been this clean,” he told PittsburghQuarterly. “We’ve taken back the riverfronts and you can actu-ally see sunny days and blue skies as you run around the region.It’s unbelievable how far we’ve come.”But better air is not necessarily good air when evidence

linking pollution to disease, disability and premature death isconsidered. Health studies increasingly report stronger evi-dence tying lower levels of air pollutants to respiratory ail-ments, cancer, cardiovascular disease and other illnesses.Exposure standards once considered adequate to protecthuman health are regularly rendered obsolete in light of new,more ominous evidence of a pollutant’s potential to harm.

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Major pollutants remain a problem

Is better good enough?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently tightenedClean Air Act standards for public exposure to PM2.5 for just thatreason. The EPA did the same with ground-level ozone standardsafter revisiting research into the toll that the air pollutant exactson human health. It’s a trend that is expected to continue. The debate is no

longer over air pollution’s potential to harm. The debate is overthe level of risk communities are willing to tolerate. And nationalcomparisons of air quality data suggest southwestern Pennsylvaniatolerates levels of several common pollutants that are higher thanwhat residents in most other parts of the United States are ex-posed to.That pollution originates from both local sources and those

outside of the region, including upwind sources in Ohio and Ken-tucky, where numerous coal-fired power plants are found in theOhio River valley.Despite improved numbers, southwestern Pennsylvania still

finds itself on the EPA’s short list of places where the air has notmet the latest standards for PM2.5 over a period of three consecu-tive years—a test that it must pass to be retired from nonattain-ment status. Only 89 of roughly 3,000 U.S. counties fail to meet that test.

Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmore-land are among them. That could change soon, says Thompson. Recent trends and

modeling data suggest Allegheny County and the region couldearn attainment status as early as next year. Even if they do, they will have a long way to go to catch up

with most of the other regions of the country. A 2011 study byBoston-based Clean Air Task Force scientists, for example, foundthat half of the PM2.5 monitors in southwestern Pennsylvania fallwithin the worst 10 percent of the monitors in the United States.Most places reached the level of air quality southwestern Pennsyl-vania is still striving for years ago.The air in southwestern Pennsylvania, as in several regions

throughout the densely populated Northeast, also fails to meetstandards for ground-level ozone, or smog, a widespread air pollu-

tant created to a large degree by the cars, trucks and buses Ameri-cans rely on every day.Then there is the way air pollution is monitored. Today’s air

quality monitors, while reliable as a general measure of air quality,do not account for all of the small pockets of pollution that can ex-pose certain neighborhoods to higher levels of bad air than theyrecord. Such hot spots are not uncommon in southwestern Penn-sylvania with its hills and valleys. And scientists continue to debate whether U.S. air quality

standards are as protective of human health as they need to be.The EPA’s most recent PM2.5 standard that the region still strug-gles to meet, for example, allows for pollution levels 20 percenthigher than the limits enforced in Canada and recommended bythe World Health Organization for all nations.“Pittsburgh is good at self-reference: How are we now com-

pared to how we were? We’re better, that is true. And usually, that’swhere the conversation ends,” says Philip Johnson, interim direc-tor of The Heinz Endowments Environment Program and directorof the Breathe Project, a consortium of local stakeholders assem-bled to improve air quality. “But how are we compared to everyone else with whom we are

competing? Not good at all, relatively and absolutely. Our air isworse and our rate of improvement is much slower.”

A matter of negotiation

n april 8, the allegheny countyHealth Department announced details of a consentdecree with the Shenango coke works that resolves the330 air quality violations that occurred over a littlemore than 14 months. Corrections were ordered and a$600,000 fine was imposed. At no time was the plant ordered to shut down,

nor did regulators consider taking such action, leading Holmes and

the heat is onCoke ovens at Shenango Inc. bakeimpurities out of coal at tempera-tures of up to 2,000 degreesFahrenheit to make the fuel usedin steel production.

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other local residents to ask why when they were briefed later onthe consent decree. After all, the Health Department made headlines that month

when it declared a public health emergency and closed a town-house complex in Carrick, where the landlord had allowed ankle-deep sewage to pool in the parking lot and left his tenants withouta consistent source of clean water.

“We were talking about immediate health effects—typhoidfever, hepatitis, all kinds of disease that can be contracted in days,”says Thompson of the problems in Carrick, where his inspectorsordered tenants to vacate the troubled townhouse complex.The air pollution of today isn’t seen as a public health threat

of that magnitude—at least not a threat grave enough to warrantan enforcement action as extreme as ordering a plant to close,which the Health Department has the authority to do.

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he u.s . justice Department, EnvironmentalProtection Agency and NewYork’s Department ofEnvironmental Conservation

were all quick to issue press statementsapplauding the $24 million fine a federaljudge imposed on Tonawanda Coke Corp.in March for the egregious violations ofthe Clean Air Act that the criminalcharges they had brought against thecompany were based on.

But it was a group of citizens fromthe western New York town who crackedthe case.

And in doing so, they provided aninstructional moment for residents living200 miles south in and aroundPittsburgh, most of whom feel powerlessto solve major environmental problems.

Nearly 79 percent of residents in thePittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Areabelieve they can do little or nothing tosolve the region’s environmental chal-lenges, according to the PittsburghRegional Environment Survey conductedlast year by Pittsburgh Today and theUniversity of Pittsburgh University Centerfor Social and Urban Research.

The survey also suggests that the levelof pessimism transcends geographicboundaries, and that senior citizens andyoung adults are the least likely to feelthey can bring about solutions.

Residents of the Town of Tonawandafelt otherwise seven years ago when theybegan meeting informally, sharing healthconcerns, stories of illness and suspicionsthat the nearby coke plant might havesomething to do with them.

Unlike Allegheny County, the localhealth department there has no air quality

program. The state handled inspectionsand air monitoring in Tonawanda. Therewere no daily, boots-on-the-ground in-spections of coke plants, as there are inAllegheny County, and only one air qualitymonitor.

Tonawanda residents sought expertiseand guidance of local universities and en-vironmental nonprofits. They organized.They learned to make basic air qualitymonitors from materials bought at HomeDepot and formed “bucket brigades” tosample the air themselves.

What they found alarmed them:A host of dangerous air toxins at highlevels, including benzene, carbon tetra-chloride and formaldehyde. They tooktheir findings to state regulators andmade them public. When the state didits own study, regulators found benzenelevels 75 times higher than health-basedlimits and determined the coke plant to bethe chief source of the carcinogen.

“We tried to get the plant owner tonegotiate with the community on acollaborative plan to reduce benzeneemissions, but he didn’t respond,” saysErin Heaney, director of the Clean AirCoalition of Western New York, the

nonprofit started by local residents. “Itwas at that point that we shifted strate-gies to putting pressure on regulators toenforce the laws that are on the books.”

The campaign included canvassingneighborhoods, approaching news mediaand reaching out to public officials.Town and county governments passedresolutions calling on the plant to reduceits benzene emissions, and the grouprecruited the support of New York’s twoU.S. senators.

More than 50 federal and state agentsraided the Tonawanda Coke plant inDecember 2009. “To be honest, I wasn’tpersonally aware of the problems until itwas brought to my attention by a localcitizen’s group,” Judith Enck, the EPARegion 2 administrator, said after the raid.

Agents discovered, among otherthings, that the plant released coke ovengas containing benzene into the air duringnormal operations through an unreportedpressure release valve. They also learnedthat the plant’s environmental controlofficer ordered employees to concealthe problem.

He was convicted of violating theClean Air Act and obstruction of justicecharges and sentenced to a year in federalprison in March. And the fine against thecoke plant was one of the largest levied ina criminal trial involving air pollution.

Half of the fine was set aside to payfor community projects, including anepidemiological study and an air and soilstudy. More important to the health ofTonawanda residents, benzene levels fellby as much as 86 percent following theenforcement actions taken at the plant.

The power of a few

Citizens mobilized to take on polluting

New York coke plant

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Is better good enough?The cumulative effects of long-term exposure to lower levels

of air pollutants don’t rise to what is considered an emergency,even though the EPA routinely counts such risks among thereasons for tightening its air quality standards. Instead, closing an industrial pollution source would likely

require a spike in emissions acute enough to pose an immediate,verifiable threat to the health of nearby residents. “We would haveto have proof through the monitors that pollution concentrationswere well above short-term accepted health standards,” Thompsonsays. “We’ve never really reached a period where you could defini-tively say it was a public health emergency.” Another consideration peculiar to coke plants is that once

shut down, the brick-lined walls of their ovens crumble as theycool and the ovens can’t be fired up again unless rebuilt.Like the EPA and state regulatory agencies across the country,

the Allegheny County Health Department negotiates with indus-trial polluters to improve their environmental performance whenair quality violations are found. The legal orders that result outlinemeasures offenders agree to do and often include fines. This approach has, over time, resulted in improvements at

some of the largest pollution sources in the region, including theClairton and Shenango coke works. But, as the record of air qualityviolations makes clear, it does not prevent plants from exceedingpollution limits again.In some cases, new violations result from old problems left

unresolved. In other cases, new problems arise that allow emis-sions to elude control systems. With each episode, the process ofnegotiation, fines and corrective orders begins anew. TheShenango plant, for example, has operated under four consent or-ders or court decrees to resolve air pollution issues since 2000. Southwestern Pennsylvania has a history of treading lightly

when it comes to industrial pollution sources. The City of Pitts-burgh’s infamous smoke control ordinances and, in particular, theanti-pollution rules adopted by Allegheny County before 1950were written with considerable input from the private corpora-tions most affected by them.In the county’s case, the dominant steel and coal industries at

the time were largely given a pass. Coke ovens and open-hearthfurnaces at steel mills, for example, were only required to adoptpollution controls that were “proven to be economically practical.” “There was certainly a tendency to go easy on the industries,”

says Joel Tarr, the Richard S. Caliguiri University Professor ofHistory and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. “The county’sair control bureau was dominated by industry people. And theywere facing the fact that the region’s economy was precarious.Coming out of the Second World War, you had run-down industrial plants and joblessness. So, they moved at a much slowerpace. They didn’t want to put too much of a financial burden onindustry.”Whether the regulatory efforts in the region still fit that de-

scription remains a matter of some debate, despite clear andmarked improvement in the region’s air quality over the past60 years. But the incentive to accommodate industry is clearly not as

great. For one thing, jobs are less of a factor today than they were

for much of the past century when heavy industry singlehandedlydrove the region’s economy. The Shenango plant, for example,employs 165 full-time workers in a region where the number ofjobs totals more than 1.16 million.The regulatory structure is profoundly different: Monitoring

air quality and industry compliance no longer relies on the self-re-ports of the pollution sources being watched. And none are moreclosely watched than coke plants, where the Health Departmentdeploys inspectors daily to take emissions readings. Allegheny County also requires coke plants to abide by local

air quality regulations specific to their operations that are amongthe toughest in the nation. That is something Shenango officialsnote when discussing the latest consent decree. And it is one rea-son why local coke plants will likely continue to struggle to removethemselves from the list of chronic sources of air pollution.Jayme Graham, manager of the county Health Department

Air Quality Program, admitted as much to the unhappy group ofnorth boroughs residents who met with her in April. “Realizingthat Shenango and the Clairton coke works have about 10 times asmany regulations, limitations and requirements than any otherplant that we have and other places have, it’s unlikely that they willever be totally in compliance of everything.”

Violations and fixes

he recent consent decree requiresboth physical improvements at the Shenango plant andchanges in practice. The plant, for example, was or-dered to extend its pollution control “shed” to catchemissions that had been escaping when smolderingcoke traveled a 20-foot exposed section of rail to thequench tower. The order also offers DTE a carrot to

further reduce emissions, allowing the company to cut its fine inhalf if it invests in enhancements to the quench tower. Regulators concluded, however, that many of the latest air pol-

lution problems were due less to technological issues than to main-tenance shortcomings and a lack of attention to detail. Those issues, plant manager Best says, are being addressed in a

number of ways. One is a new maintenance plan for the bag house,which collects dust and particulates when coke is pushed from theoven. Another is renewed emphasis on training and awareness ofenvironmental issues, which includes making pre-shift meetingsaround environmental performance part of the daily routine ofplant employees. “We’re targeting 100 percent [compliance]. Webelieve it’s a reachable target, but very difficult.”Health Department officials were encouraged when violations

at the coke plant recently slowed to a trickle, but they’ve seen thatbefore. “The problems you have with coke plants you just don’t fixone time,” says Thompson. “You have to have ongoing mainte-nance, very tight operating procedures. There is a lot of human in-tervention that must occur in order to control emissions. We’regoing to have to remain vigilant. Based on history, we’re certainlyskeptical of their ability to maintain compliance.”

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‘Not a problem at all’

he region’s signature environmentalaccomplishment occurred nearly 70 years ago when cityand county smoke control campaigns led to shifts in pol-icy and practices that, in large part, eliminated the thicksmoke that shrouded the area for more than four hoursa day on average.

Beginning in the late 1930s, the region witnessed asurge of public concern over the effects of smoke and protestsover the conditions, particularly by women’s groups. A strong pub-lic-private partnership coalesced around the issue, led by Pitts-burgh Mayor David L. Lawrence and the prominent banker,Richard King Mellon, who saw cleaner air as critical to the successof their urban revitalization plans and to regional competitiveness.New policies required households, businesses and industries toburn fuels cleaner than bituminous coal or use equipment thatlessened the smoke. Government agencies were created to enforcethem. Technological solutions emerged, the most influential beingthe use of natural gas in domestic and commercial heating.Today, air quality control technology is far more advanced and

the health effects of pollution are more thoroughly understoodand documented. However, the nature of the region’s air pollutionand the public response to it are markedly different.In recent years, there have been several attempts to eliminate

Allegheny County’s Air Quality Program—but not because it wasperceived as being too lax in chasing polluters and improving thecounty’s air quality rankings. When former Allegheny County chief executive Onorato

considered shifting local air quality authority to the state Depart-ment of Environmental Protection in 2007, the loudest argumentagainst the county program was that it took too long to processair quality permits for businesses that pose a pollution risk. Lastyear, state Rep. Eli Evankovich, R-Murrysville, tried to eliminatethe program arguing, in part, that it’s an unnecessary cost tocounty taxpayers—a charge that belies the fact that county taxdollars don’t pay for it. The program’s current $7,362,369 budgetis covered entirely by federal grants, fines and permit and emissions fees.While the smoke problem 70 years ago was readily apparent

to anyone who went outdoors, that’s not the case with the airpollution that lingers today. The region’s most nettlesomeproblems, PM2.5 and ground-level ozone, appear on their worstdays as a haze that’s easily mistaken as a blanket of humidity on asummer day.That may help explain why recent surveys find the majority of

southwestern Pennsylvanians are generally satisfied with the qual-ity of the air they breathe, despite the region’s poor rankings, newsmedia reports, health studies and other evidence that suggests it’sfar from problem-free.“We know people much more often make decisions based on

their day-to-day experiences than on what any kind of scientific

data tell them,” says Michael Finewood, assistant professor of ge-ography and sustainability at Chatham University, whose researchincludes looking at environmental perceptions and decision mak-ing. “When presented with data that doesn’t fit with their experi-ence, they often find ways to normalize it. They may say, ‘Thosescientists have an agenda,’ or, ‘I don’t believe that. It doesn’t makesense to me.’”Nearly 65 percent of residents across the seven-county Pitts-

burgh Metropolitan Statistical Area describe air quality as eithera “minor problem” or “not a problem at all.” Only 5.4 percent de-scribe it as a “severe problem,” according to the Pittsburgh Re-gional Environment Survey conducted last year by the regionalindicators project Pittsburgh Today and the University of Pitts-burgh University Center for Social and Urban Research. Those perspectives change very little when viewed across

demographic categories, such as the income, education, race,gender and age of residents interviewed. And similar findings havebeen reported in earlier local surveys that ask about air quality.If there is one group aware of the problem, it’s those with

asthma. The American Allergy and Asthma Foundation ranksPittsburgh the fourth most challenging place to live with asthmain the nation, listing air pollution and the number of ozone alertdays among the chief reasons why.“I have patients who, when we have high ozone days, they

are flaring,” says Deborah Gentile, director of research, allergy,asthma and immunology for the Allegheny Health Network.“Some I won’t have come in to see me. I’ll try to treat them byphone because I know they’re going to get worse if they go out-side. That’s a routine event here in the office.”Several studies under way promise to shed more light on air

quality in southwestern Pennsylvania and local health effects ofpollution. Gentile and colleagues are looking at the incidence ofasthma in public schools, including districts near major air pollu-tion sources. The Allegheny County Health Department recentlyhired an epidemiologist to study the health effects of air pollutionwhose first assignment is to look at communities near the Clairtoncoke works. And Carnegie Mellon University researchers are map-ping hot spots, specific neighborhoods where air pollution levelsare greater than what’s being reported by air monitors that cover awider range.Whether such studies will influence perceptions of air quality

in ways others before them haven’t remains to be seen. “Clearlythis is a social science challenge as much as it is a physical scienceand medical science challenge,” says the Heinz Endowments’Philip Johnson. “We have medical scientists telling us we haverisks that are excessive. We have the physical scientists telling uswe have air pollution, how it varies over space and time and whereit comes from. “What we have to do is ask the question, what is our future?

How livable and competitive do we wish to be? Do we want to be aplace defined by its pollution and health risk, or by how clean it isand how livable it is?”

Jeffery Fraser is Pittsburgh Today senior editor. Pittsburgh Todaystaff writer Julia Fraser contributed to this article.

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