We moved to Pittsburgh for many reasons: a slower pace of life, the kind of friends who will linger after dinner, and the chance to have a backyard garden.  

Fifteen months into this Pittsburgh life, we have all of that and more. Unfortunately, there was one surprise that wasn't so welcome. Two days after landing here last July, we awoke to crisis.  

Lisa, my wife, woke up with an asthma attack and a splitting headache. I woke up to the sound of her slamming the windows shut to our home in the East End. We hadn't yet unpacked the HEPA filter that we brought from New York. What was that smell? It was a blend of rotten eggs and burning metal. Whatever it was, we knew we had a big problem.  

“The smell,” as we have come to call it, is most noticeable early in the morning hours, and it is often weakened by noon. Beyond the nuisance of smelly air, this pollution gives Lisa respiratory distress and headaches. Exercising outdoors on a bad air morning is out of the question, and sometimes we have to cancel preplanned activities when bad air comes in.  

Our experiences led us to start investigating just what was producing this polluted air. Our search led us to the Allegheny County Health Department website, which showed that there are four non-compliant industrial facilities in the county.  

The smoking gun in our research was PennFuture's investigation, finding 6,700 Clean Air Act violations by one of these facilities, Clairton Coke Works, in a 3.5 year period. During this period, Clairton Coke Works' violations average to more than five air quality violations per day.   

We know that the Allegheny County Health Department has repeatedly fined Clairton Coke Works for air quality violations. These fines have not stopped the violations or the resulting public health crisis. When a facility commits 6,700 air quality violations in 3.5 years, that suggests an operating strategy more than a series of accidents.  

PennFuture is a leader in the movement to help make sure our elected and appointed officials represent the environmental interests of the millions of people imperiled by industrial pollution in our community. We first noticed PennFuture's Toxic Neighbor Campaign as a Facebook ad focused on the Clairton Coke Works. We were so inspired that the campaign was addressing the two most pressing local air quality issues – the long emergency of the Clairton Coke Works and the impending emergency of the Shell Ethane Cracker Plant in Beaver County – that we immediately sent a donation to help PennFuture amplify this campaign. PennFuture has been doing great work across the state for decades, and it is great to see them taking on some of our most significant environmental threats in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania.  

Of course, the history of the coking and steel industry is one of flagrant local air pollution. During the 1948 Donora Smog, 20 people died as a result of U.S. Steel's Hydrogen Fluoride and Sulfur Dioxide emissions, accumulating during a 4-day weather inversion. The disaster was partly limited by cooperation between local officials and plant managers who agreed that the plants had to be shut down for the duration of the weather inversion. Where is this kind of cooperation today?

Seventy years later, the air is cleaner in Pittsburgh than it was in the 1940's, but far from acceptable. In the 1940's, Mayor David Lawrence and banker Richard Mellon worked together to help check a smoke problem that was wildly out of control. Thanks in part to them, that coal door in my basement goes unused, and I don't have to change my shirt mid-day due to sooty air.  

Today, we have the Clean Air Act and a better scientific and medical understanding of the health effects of emissions from coke and steel making. Unfortunately, we also have a situation in which industrial polluters can continue to pay fines to operate outside of Clean Air Act standards.

The Allegheny County Health Department, ACHD Director Dr. Karen Hacker, and County Executive Rich Fitzgerald must lead us as David Lawrence and Richard Mellon did in the 1940's. They must act more aggressively to stop the toxic emissions that harm our most vulnerable populations, up to and including revoking emissions permits for non-compliant facilities. Until they do, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County will fall short of its potential to be a great, healthy place to live. 

For more information on the Toxic Neighbor campaign and how to get involved, click here.