The Shenango coke works on Neville Island, just west of Pittsburgh on the Ohio River, closed down in 2016. Coke is a refined form of coal used in steelmaking, made by baking coal at very high temperatures. The process creates toxic air pollution, and plants like Shenango and US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works have been the subject of community opposition for years.
A group of researchers wanted to see what effect Shenango’s closing had on the health of surrounding communities. They’ve published two studies on the plant’s closure. The first showed cardiovascular ER visits plummeted after the plant shut down. The latest, which came out in July, showed a similar drop in respiratory ER visits.
The Allegheny Front’s Reid Frazier spoke with one of the study’s co-authors, George Thurston, a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
Reid Frazier: What made you want to study the closure of Shenango plant?
George Thurston: The beauty of it is that it’s an experiment, but it’s a natural experiment. They close the plant, and then you see what happens afterwards. So you have a before and an after. Normally, when we do studies of air pollution, things don’t happen that rapidly. But here, it was a decisive, you know, 100% on, [then] 0% [on] after the closure date, and it allows you to compare the before versus after in a very clear way.
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Reid Frazier: So can you go over what did your studies find?
George Thurston: We looked at both cardiovascular and respiratory [illness], including children’s pediatric emergency department visits in the three years before and then the three following [the plant’s closure].
I think the most surprising result was the large drop that we saw immediately after the closure, for example, for pediatric asthma visits. That went down by 41% in the month following the closure. And then the really interesting thing to me was, of course the pollution went away. So we saw a much bigger drop than we would have expected based on studies of sort of average air pollution, which is a mixture of dust and as well as fossil fuel.
I think the most surprising result was the large drop that we saw immediately after the closure, for example, for pediatric asthma visits.
But then the numbers kept going down over time, over years, and we saw that in both the cardiac and then also in the pediatric emergency department visits. They kept going down for years. So there was a healing that went on in the community as the cumulative effects of the pollution were reduced.
Reid Frazier: So, were there any other explanations? Could it have been you simply started looking during a time of year when cardiac or respiratory problems decline, or was this pretty clear what was happening?
George Thurston: Well, it was very clear. But we did a lot of checks, cross-checks, with other communities in the Pittsburgh area. One near the [U.S. Steel] Clairton plant, which is sort of similar. They also had coal coking operations there, and that continued, and we didn’t see any drop [in health impacts] of that kind. And then we also looked at a control population far away from Pittsburgh. And it also didn’t show a big change as we saw there.
Reid Frazier: Were you surprised by the numbers that you saw in the drops of these cases?
George Thurston: I wasn’t surprised that they went down. But what was surprising was just how quickly and how large. Other studies we’ve looked at in the past, I and others around the country, have found variations when the pollution goes up on a high day or a low day, we saw a certain rate of change. And you have to control for other variables like day of week. More admissions happen on Mondays than other days, for example. And you know that indicated a certain change would happen–if the pollution went down, [health effects] would be expected to go down by a certain percentage or if pollution went up, then it would go up.
We could really improve health by reducing the amount of fossil fuel combustion that we do and processing of fossil fuels.
These numbers were much larger per amount of pollution and we believe what is happening there is that these particles coming from these coal [and coke] plants are just among the most toxic particle types.
We find this in general with fossil fuel particles, as opposed to an average mix of particles that can come from anywhere, including from windblown soil. So it was a combination of the amount of pollution that dropped and also the type of pollution that these plants put out.
Reid Frazier: What do we know about this type of pollution that makes it likely that it’s worse than other types of your average particle pollution?
George Thurston: There’s very high concentrations of toxic metals and organics in these particles. And the thing is the coking process basically is taking regular, high quality coal, and heating it up. It’s not burning the coal, it’s heating it and basically squeezing out the most toxic things into the air, leaving behind pure carbon. But while [the coke] gets pure carbon, the air is filled with these toxic metals, including arsenic, lead, selenium, and also things that are called transition metals, like copper and vanadium, that cause oxidative stress in the body.
That is something that causes inflammation in the body and that makes most organs of the body, stresses them out, and makes diseases worse. For example, asthma and heart disease and the like are all worsened by having oxidative stress and inflammation.
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Reid Frazier: What conclusions are you drawing from the studies that you’ve done so far?
George Thurston: We’re concluding really that the fossil fuel particles are very toxic and I think there’s other evidence to support this. We could really improve health by reducing the amount of fossil fuel combustion that we do and processing of fossil fuels.
Reid Frazier: The Trump administration is postponing the implementation of more stringent regulations on hazardous air pollutants from the steel industry, including at plants like the Clairton plant, not far from the old Shenango site. What do you think the impact of loosening up or delaying stronger regulations will be on human health?
George Thurston: It will definitely be adverse. There will be a continuation of the pollution exposures and maybe even a worsening if the laws are not enforced, they have violations and no one does anything about them, this kind of thing. If we don’t see strict enforcement of the laws and they’re not going to have a tightening, then they’re basically missing out on health improvements that could have been achieved.
Editor’s note: Thurston’s and his co-authors’ studies were funded by The Heinz Endowments, which also funds The Allegheny Front.
