Public health advocates urged the Trump administration to protect residents and workers by sticking to a Biden-era timeline for reducing benzene and chromium emissions at the perimeter of steel and coke plants in Pennsylvania and other states rather than continuing to delay compliance rules.
A report released Thursday by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project said emissions of benzene, a carcinogen, from U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works were up to eight times higher at the fenceline of its plant near Pittsburgh than a California health standard. And it said a six-month average of chromium concentrations on the fenceline of another U.S. Steel plant at Gary, Indiana, were twice as high as recommended by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
EIP used the California thresholds because many states do not have standards for benzene and chromium in ambient air, and federal risk levels for the substances are less protective. The Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration set “action levels” for benzene and chromium above which steel and coke plants would be required to reduce emissions to protect public health.
But the July deadline for plants to start monitoring for those pollutants at their fencelines was not implemented by the Trump EPA, which said it intends to give companies two additional years. The figures in the new report are from preliminary testing required by the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, 17 of 20 American steel mills and coke plants surveyed by EIP were out of compliance with existing requirements of the federal Clean Air Act for at least one three-month period over the past three years, according to EPA data.
The Clairton plant—where an explosion last week killed two workers and injured at least 10—was out of compliance with the law every quarter for the last three years, drawing some $10.7 million in EPA fines, by far the largest among the 20 plants.
The survey covered Alabama, Illinois, Ohio, Virginia and Indiana, in addition to Pennsylvania, where five of the steel or coke plants are located.
“Fenceline monitoring is vital to protecting nearby residents because facilities often under-report their emissions of air toxics,” said the study from EIP, a group founded by a former head of EPA’s civil enforcement office. “Despite the demonstrated success of fenceline monitoring in reducing concentrations of hazardous air pollutants, the Trump administration is slow-walking their implementation … and may ultimately roll them back.”
The Clairton explosion showed that the steel industry needs “more accountability, not less,” EIP executive director Jen Duggan said in a conference call for reporters. “Working in and living near steel-making facilities can be dangerous because of serious accidents that have immediate consequences.”
She added: “This is why requirements to measure hazardous air pollutants at the perimeter of steel-making facilities and to take action to reduce pollution are so important.”
The EPA said it extended the Biden-era compliance deadline to July 2027 because finalizing the earlier deadlines would not give the agency enough time to respond to comments from the public and industry.
“If the EPA were to seek, evaluate, and respond to comments before finalizing the deadline revisions, it is highly unlikely that the agency would be able to finalize this action before the compliance deadlines, thereby potentially throwing regulated parties into immediate non-compliance,” it said in a statement. “Thus, there is good cause to forego notice and comment to extend the compliance deadlines to July 2027.”
In March, the EPA announced what it called the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history” when it said it would “reconsider” a wide range of rules, including multiple requirements under the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), which cover steel and other industries.
The compliance delay could also deprive the public of information about the steel industry’s greenhouse-gas emissions, EIP said. The facilities that the group studied emitted 43.3 million metric tons of climate-changing pollutants in 2023, the equivalent of just over 10 million gasoline-powered cars driven for a year, it said.
Qiyam Ansari, executive director of Valley Clean Air Now, said his Pittsburgh-area group responded to the Clairton explosion by handing out air purifiers and masks to residents, whose health during non-emergency times depends on the information provided by fenceline monitoring.
“No emergency response can undo the daily exposure to hazardous air that the people here live with,” Ansari said. “That’s why the NESHAP rules, especially fenceline monitoring, are so critical. These rules finally require companies like U.S. Steel to prove with real data the pollution that is escaping into our neighborhoods.”
In June, Nippon Steel of Japan announced it was buying U.S. Steel. The American company did not respond to a request for comment on the EIP report.
Breathe Project, which advocates for clean air in the Pittsburgh region, welcomed the EIP report and said fenceline monitoring would have helped to inform the public of emissions from the Aug. 11 explosion at Clairton.
“Community members and workers deserve to be protected from high concentrations of hazardous air pollutants, such as benzene,” Breathe Project executive director Matt Mehalik said in a statement. “Being able to measure these pollutants at the fence line is the first step to ensuring protection and accountability.”
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