05 December
Etna borough manager Mary Ellen Ramage can rattle off the names of five elderly widows who brought chocolates to office staff when they paid their water bills. That was when Ramage was a receptionist some 45 years ago.
- PFAS on our shelves and in our bodies
- Fractured
- Exposed: BPA science
- Agents of Change
- Cutting edge of science
- Climate catastrophe in the South
- Cancer risk in Pittsburgh
- PFAS contamination
- Breathless: Childhood asthma
- Peak Pig: The soul of rural America
- Sacred Water
- Winged Warnings
- Pollution, Poverty, People of Color
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Residents now know this isn’t a coincidence. It’s from years of PFAS contamination from Chemours.
It wasn’t easy to make the connection. More than a decade of water testing and lawsuits identified the link between aggressive cancers and per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS – a class of more than 9,000 toxic and persistent man-made compounds known informally as “forever chemicals.” They’re commonly found in nonstick cookware, water-resistant clothing, firefighting foam, cosmetics, food packaging and recently in school uniforms and insecticides.
The difficulty of tracing these chemicals to a specific source is that Americans — 97% of us, by one estimate — are exposed to potentially thousands of PFAS.
New research published in Science of the Total Environment now finds that tracing models can identify sources of PFAS contamination from people’s blood samples. Instead of using environmental measures of PFAS as a proxy for how people are exposed, the methods use blood samples as a more direct way to map people’s exposure.
“If this works, it would allow us to identify, without any prior knowledge, what people are being exposed to and how they’re being exposed to it,” Dylan Wallis, a lead author of the paper and toxicologist formerly at North Carolina State University, told EHN.
The research, while not yet perfect, marks the beginning of what could become a wide-scale method of determining where the PFAS in our blood came from—such as our food, drinking water or use of nonstick cookware—and how much of it came from each source. But its effectiveness hinges on the need to collect more comprehensive data on where PFAS occurs in people’s bodies, the environment and sources. If scientists can collect this data, then these methods would be able to draw a roadmap for people’s exposure, allowing us to pinpoint problem areas, avoid contamination and implement regulatory changes.
PFAS in blood samples
Downtown Colorado Springs. The nearby Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado used PFAS-containing firefighting foam.
Credit: David Shankbone
The Chemours facility in North Carolina, which manufactures fluoropolymers for nonstick and waterproof products.
Credit: Emily Sutton, Haw Riverkeeper
For this tracing method to work, scientists need an idea of which compounds exist in air, water, food and everyday products in a determined community. First, they have to know where to look for PFAS. This study used data from previous research to identify the types of PFAS in drinking water. Then, they test blood samples for which PFAS are in people’s bodies—although using blood alone gives us only part of the contamination picture, Carla Ng, a chemical and biological engineer at University of Pittsburgh, told EHN. Once they match PFAS proportions in blood to what’s in their drinking water, as in this study, they can gain clues to which sources contributed the chemicals showing up in people’s blood.
“You start to build this picture of what are the inputs, what’s the material they’re getting their exposure from, and then what’s in their blood,” Ng, who was not involved in the study, explained.
The new study analyzed blood samples taken in 2018 and 2020 from residents in Wilmington, North Carolina, and three towns in El Paso County, Colorado. Both communities are near well-known PFAS polluters: the Chemours facility in North Carolina, which manufactures fluoropolymers for nonstick and waterproof products, and the Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado, which uses PFAS-containing firefighting foam, also called AFFFs.
Related: PFAS on our shelves and in our bodies
The team used computer models to identify 20 PFAS compounds from residents’ blood samples and then grouped them in categories representing different sources. Some are easy to identify because manufacturers often use a specific type of PFAS. For example, the compounds found in firefighting foam have a unique signature, like a fingerprint, making Peterson Space Force Base the obvious culprit. But more diffuse sources of PFAS, such as those in dust or food, are harder to pin down because scientists aren’t sure which PFAS are in them or where they come from.
In North Carolina and Colorado, the sources were more obvious, allowing the research team to test models’ ability to identify sources. However, to conduct similar research on a national scale is not so simple. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey has tested levels of PFAS in blood samples nationwide since 1999, but it only tests for a specific list of PFAS, which could overlook the full spectrum of compounds.
Drinking water in both locations in the study shows high levels of fluoroethers, a newer type of PFAS, and perfluoroalkyl acids, many of which are “legacy” PFAS, meaning they have been phased out of production for at least a decade but are still found in drinking water. Because the chemical bonds are so strong, they persist in the environment for years, which is why they show up in blood samples long after companies have stopped using or manufacturing them. Long-chain PFAS like PFOA and PFOS, which are the most-studied compounds with a longer structure of carbon-fluorine bonds, are harder to break down, and they bond to proteins in the blood more easily than short-chain compounds.
“These last a really long time,” Wallis said of long-chain PFAS, which were recorded at levels several times higher than national averages. “If you were drinking a really high level of it 40 years ago, you would still have really high levels of it 40 years later.”
A pollution snapshot
The new study analyzed blood samples taken in 2018 and 2020 from residents in Wilmington, North Carolina, and three towns in El Paso County, Colorado.
Credit: Dylan Wallis
Wallis said they were surprised the models worked because they have never been used for PFAS before. They were built to trace other contaminants in the environment, like particles in air pollution, rather than in people.
Tracing PFAS is more challenging than tracing air pollution for several reasons, Xindi Hu, a lead data scientist at the research organization Mathematica, told EHN. Hu conducted earlier research using a different type of computer analysis of blood samples to identify the main sources of PFAS contamination in the Faroe Islands.
Many PFAS lack distinct chemical fingerprints to tell researchers exactly where a particular compound came from, Hu said. But in the study led by Wallis, the chemical fingerprints from the Space Force base in Colorado and fluorochemical facility in North Carolina are well-known.
“When you take a blood sample, it’s really just a snapshot,” she said. “So how do you translate this snapshot of concentration back to the course of the entire exposure history?”
That’s partly why the new paper’s authors conducted this study: The more compounds that are correctly linked to a source, the better these models will work, Wallis said. In essence, they need a better database of PFAS compounds so the models know how to connect the dots.
PFAS also react differently in the human body than in the environment, and scientists still don’t fully understand how we metabolize different compounds. Shorter-chain PFAS, for example, are more likely to appear in urine samples than in blood because they are water-soluble, said Pittsburgh’s Ng, who studies how PFAS react in humans and wildlife.
“If you’re doing everything on the basis of blood levels, it may not tell you everything you need to know about exposure and potential toxicity,” she said, adding that PFAS could also accumulate in the liver, brain, lungs and other locations where it’s difficult to take samples.
Worse, more modern PFAS with carbon-hydrogen bonds can actually transform into other types of compounds as the body metabolizes them, which could give a false impression of what people are exposed to.
“The key to identifying a good tracer is a molecule that doesn’t transform,” Ng said. Some PFAS are great tracers, she added, but “the more transformable your PFAS is in general, the poorer the tracer is going to be.”
That’s why newer PFAS compounds like GenX were not detected in blood samples or used as tracers in the recent study.
“These models aren’t going to account for everything,” Wallis said. “No model is.”
Stopping the contamination
Wallis and their co-authors said they hope the models can become more accurate for less exposed communities in the future. With more data, it would be easier to suggest what to avoid instead of guessing where PFAS exposures come from, Wallis said, adding that it could lead to more protective regulations.
Although these models can vaguely help identify where compounds might come from in a particular community, it’s not a definitive solution, Alissa Cordner, an environmental sociologist and co-director of the PFAS Project Lab who was not involved in the recent study, told EHN. Even if there’s no immediate application of these methods, identifying where PFAS are is the first step.
“Everybody can point their fingers at other possible sources of contamination,” Cordner said. “The best way to address this is not to try to, after the fact, link people’s exposure to a contamination source. It’s to stop the contamination.”
Editor's note: This article was updated to clarify the types of chemicals examined in North Carolina and Colorado.
Coal ash, the material left behind after coal is burned, contains harmful substances like arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, lithium, mercury and uranium, among others. Exposure is linked to health effects like cancer, damage to the thyroid, liver and kidneys, and neurodevelopmental problems in children.
Although coal consumption has declined across the U.S., the power industry continues to generate about 70 million tons of coal ash annually, and after 100 years of burning coal, U.S. power plants have generated about five billion tons of coal ash.
The new report, published by the environmental law advocacy groups Environmental Integrity Project and EarthJustice, found that 91% of U.S. coal-fired plants have ash landfills or waste ponds that are leaking toxic chemicals and heavy metals into surrounding groundwater at levels that threaten streams, rivers and drinking water aquifers. It also found that many coal plant owners manipulate data or incorrectly claim exemptions to regulations to avoid having to clean up contamination.
“Coal plants are polluting the nation’s water illegally and getting away with it,” Lisa Evans, a senior attorney at Earthjustice and coauthor of the report, said during a news briefing. “At least 91% of them are poisoning our water with hazardous toxics and doing little or nothing to address it. This is illegal.”
The report ranks the top 10 worst contaminated coal ash sites in the country. GenOn’s New Castle Generating Plant, about 46 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, ranks sixth on the list. Groundwater near the site contains arsenic levels 372 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s, or EPA’s, safety threshold, and lithium levels 54 times higher.
Arsenic exposure is linked to multiple forms of cancer, neurological impairments in children and skin conditions. Lithium exposure is linked to kidney and neurological damage, decreased thyroid function and birth defects. The GenOn plant sits along the Beaver River, which feeds into the Ohio River, which, in turn, provides drinking water to more than five million people.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service taking core samples after North Carolina's Dan River coal ash spill in 2014.
Credit: USFWS
“In addition to the Ohio River being an important source of drinking water to many Americans, people in the region also love to fish, swim and boat out in these waters,” Zach Barber, a community organizer with environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment, who was not involved with the report, told EHN. “This pollution poses real risks that are not being taken seriously by these companies or our regulators.”
The GenOn site, which has approximately 50 acres of coal ash landfill containing about three million tons of ash, is the only location in Pennsylvania to make the report’s top 10 list. It follows coal ash dumps in Texas, Nevada, North Carolina and Wyoming (two sites), and ranks worse than sites in Maryland, Mississippi, Utah and Tennessee. The most polluted site in the nation is the San Miguel Electric Plant south of San Antonio, Texas. The report, an update to a 2019 report on coal ash sites, also details groundwater contamination at 292 additional coal plants in 43 states.
“Coal ash waste is causing widespread water contamination that threatens drinking water supplies and the environment,” Lisa Evans, senior attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement. “In every state where coal is burned, power companies are violating federal health protections.”
Manipulating data to hide poisonous pollution
In 2015, in response to nearly 160 cases of water contamination and several catastrophic coal ash spills, the EPA established the first-ever regulations governing coal ash disposal collectively referred to as the Coal Ash Rule.
The rule required sites disposing of coal ash to post groundwater monitoring reports on their websites. There’s no federal database of these notices, so the authors of the report collected and analyzed the data to create their own. They concluded that many power companies are illegally manipulating data and monitoring to avoid cleanup requirements.
Companies are supposed to collect samples from clean background wells that aren’t near coal ash disposal sites to compare against wells on site. But they found that companies often chose previously contaminated sites to use as background wells, making it harder to find evidence of coal ash pollution. Many plants also leave large parts of a disposal area unmonitored, use inappropriate statistical methods to hide patterns of contamination, and falsely attribute the contamination to another source, according to the report.
“Coal plant owners are deliberately employing tricks to hide coal ash pollution,” Evans said. “People live next to these ponds. People drink the groundwater. Families use the lakes and streams next to these ponds. Leaving ash will make people sick and harm the water they depend on…but pennies over people has always been the norm where coal ash is concerned.”
Some plant owners, including the owners of GenOn’s former New Castle Plant, say the sites were already contaminated before they arrived, so they shouldn’t be responsible for cleanup, according to the report. GenOn’s New Castle Plant landfill was built on top of an 80-year-old, 120-acre ash pond, and the company is only claiming responsibility for a small part of the landfill, according to the document.
“GenOn must apply the Rule to the landfill as a whole,” the report concludes. “This approach is not only legally required, but also common sense – there is no way to restore groundwater at the site without addressing all of the coal ash known to be buried there.”
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokesperson Jamar Thrasher told EHN the agency supports the EPA's enforcement of the Coal Ash Rule by checking compliance with reporting requirements and deadlines for closure or upgrades. In 2020, the DEP issued a Notice of Violation for groundwater contamination and asked GenOn to address it. The company agreed, and remediation is underway, according to Thrasher, who said the cleanup plan recommends two more years of groundwater monitoring to determine whether the cleanup measures taken so far have been effective.
GenOn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It isn’t the only company avoiding responsibility: The report found that at nearly half of the plants causing contamination, owners are not planning any cleanup, and most have denied responsibility. Of the plants that have agreed cleanup is necessary, only a handful have cleanup plans in place, and most lack clear timelines and fall short of federal standards.
The report also notes that most coal plants are located in or near environmental justice communities (communities that are primarily made up of low-income residents and/or people of color), and that 70% of coal ash ponds that are dangerously close to groundwater are located in communities that are primarily Black or brown.
How can we fix this?
Both state agencies and the EPA have authority to enforce the Coal Ash Rule. In a few states, state regulatory agencies are actively working to enforce the rule, according to Evans, while other states rely on the EPA.
The new report recommends a number of solutions, including increased federal oversight to stop coal companies from manipulating data and improperly claiming exemptions, implementing enforceable cleanup schedules, closing loopholes for sites that are no longer operational, requiring testing of drinking water near coal ash dumps and banning dangerous re-use of coal ash (such as using it as a soil substitute).
“The first place to start is enforcing the rules we already have on the books,” Barber said. “But the only way to completely protect people from the health harms of coal is to leave it in the ground and switch to cleaner, renewable sources of energy.”
The report, published by the Australian Minderoo Foundation, estimates that the plastics industry is costing society around $100 billion annually in environmental clean-ups, ecosystem degradation, shorter life expectancy and medical treatments. Minderoo is a philanthropic organization focused on the environment and climate, among other causes.
“We found that the negative impacts of plastic on human health are at least as consequential as the environmental risks about plastics that tend to dominate the story,” Dominic Charles, director of finance and transparency at the Minderoo Foundation and one of the study’s coauthors, told EHN. “Working to actually put a number on these social costs was a real eye opener.”
To estimate these costs the researchers reviewed more than 5,000 academic papers to determine where there was scientific consensus on health harms associated with plastic ingredients. Then they estimated the global rates of disease and mortality associated with exposures to those ingredients to put a dollar amount on the public health costs. Finally, they worked with a group of attorneys who specialize in modeling risk for investors and insurers to estimate the legal liability plastics manufacturers are likely to face.
“The challenge is that plastics are completely ubiquitous, so it’s very hard to pinpoint the source of a harmful exposure,” Charles explained. “Eventually that leads you to the somewhat absurd conclusion that it doesn’t matter how toxic your product is — as long as lots of companies are producing as much of it as possible, in as many different ways as possible, nobody has any liability. But that’s something we’re seeing change. There’s an evolution being made in the legal doctrine to deal with that.”
Lawsuits unfolding related to other ubiquitous chemicals like PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), glyphosate, and even opioids are forging new legal pathways, the report points out. In the case of PFAS, the chemicals are pervasive, with many companies selling products that contain them, but only a handful of companies manufacture them — and those are the companies being sued. The story is similar, Charles said, when it comes to the most harmful additives in plastic products.
“The plaintiffs in these cases are using innovative legal arguments, particularly related to public nuisance theories of harm, to successfully bring these cases forward,” Charles said. “We think these kinds of new legal strategies will also open the door to plastic litigation.”
How is plastic harming us?
While the research is still unfolding, the report concluded that there’s “robust scientific consensus on human health harms resulting from some of the performance-enhancing chemical additives used in plastics.”
These include certain phthalates, bisphenols (like BPA and its replacements) and flame retardants. All three classes of chemicals contain endocrine-disrupting compounds, which cause problems in the body’s hormonal systems and are linked to significant health issues including infertility, early puberty, developmental issues like ADHD and autism, and metabolic disorders like type II diabetes and obesity. There’s also evidence that they increase cancer risk.
The study estimates that manufacturers of these chemical additives are most likely to be exposed to litigation stemming from these health harms. Manufacturers of these types of chemicals include companies like BASF, Dow Chemical Company, Eastman Chemical Company and ExxonMobil Corporation.
The researchers also examined emerging research on the health harms associated with micro or nano plastics — microscopic plastic pieces that humans ingest through tap and bottled water, seafood, salts, milk, fruit and vegetables. Exposure has been linked to respiratory, immune, reproductive and digestive system problems and increased cancer risk.
“Micro or nano plastics have the same kind of persistence in the environment as PFAS chemicals,” Charles said. “Those legal proceedings are going to be highly relevant to the future of plastics litigation.”
Charles added that although these lawsuits could total billions of dollars, they won’t keep pace with the social costs, especially in the near term. These hazards enter the stream of commerce and it’s many years later that scientists start piecing together how harmful they are, he said. Then, it takes years to reach a scientific consensus, and it still takes years before lawyers take action after that.
Related: The US falls behind most of the world in plastic pollution legislation
“That’s why the threat of liability isn’t working as a sufficiently preventative measure right now,” he said. “We also need to change the way we’re regulating these chemicals.”
The American Chemistry Council, a trade and lobbying group for chemical manufacturers, issued a statement saying the report is “detached from reality” and emphasizing that plastics are important to modern medicine and innovation. A spokesperson for the group declined to answer questions about what specific aspects of the report the Council disagrees with, and whether the group has ever conducted its own risk assessments or addressed potential litigation related to health and environmental damages from plastics.
What does this mean for petrochemical development?
Shell's new petrochemical complex in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Credit: Nate Smallwood for Environmental Health News and Sierra Magazine
In the first 13 years of the 21st century, plastics manufacturing surpassed total production in the last century, and production is expected to double again in 20 years and almost quadruple triple by 2050. Lawsuits have the potential to slow that growth.
“This report is basically communicating that if you invest in plastics, you’re taking a calculated risk and there are threats looming,” Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher focused on energy and petrochemicals at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a progressive think tank, told EHN.
O’Leary, who was not involved in the Minderoo study, said petrochemical development in Appalachia’s Ohio River Valley, which spans parts of western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee, has already been hampered by unfavorable market conditions for plastics.
Shell is about to open a massive new plastics plant in the Ohio River Valley, about 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, which will turn fracked ethane gas into up to 1.6 million metric tons of plastic pellets annually, most of which are expected to produce single-use packaging and plastic bags. It’s one of five such facilities that have been proposed in the Ohio River Valley, but the only one that’s gotten off the ground. None of the other projects are expected to move forward.
Other plans “died not because we convinced a lot of investors to become more climate conscious or environmentally caring,” O’Leary said, “but because we demonstrated that these investments were not wise ones.”
“Shell still has additional investment decisions to make concerning their plant,” he added, “and now they’ll have to take into account at least the possibility of legal action and the risk posed by that.”
Residents near Shell’s plant have expressed concern about how the millions of tons of air pollution the plant will generate annually will impact their health. The Minderoo report only briefly acknowledges liability related to pollution from plastics manufacturing plants, but Charles said these communities are particularly at risk from the effects of the industry.
“Exposures around production facilities are relatively small compared to the ubiquitous exposures and potential liabilities arising from plastics as a whole,” he said. “That said, they are probably easier to build a case on, and those cases may well be some of the first to be brought in terms of plastic litigation.”
Most research on air pollution treats all PM2.5 — air pollution particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (much smaller than a grain of sand) — as equally dangerous.
But PM2.5 can be made up of many components, including things like sulfate, nitrate and ammonium, which primarily come from human-made sources like fossil fuel combustion and industrial emissions, but can also come from natural sources like soil, sea salt and wildfires. This new study is among the first to indicate that the sources of air pollution particles could determine how harmful they are.
“It’s often assumed that all PM2.5 is the same,” Dr. Gillian Goobie, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health, told EHN. “We now have a better idea of which specific particles are causing the most harm for these patients, and what the likely sources of those particles are.”
The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked at the effects of air pollution from various sources on patients with fibrotic interstitial lung disease — a group of more than 200 lung diseases that involve scarring of the lungs. Patients with these diseases are more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution than the general population.
The researchers used satellite data to determine the makeup of PM2.5 pollution and compared the impacts of exposure to different types of PM2.5 particles among 6,683 patients in three groups: one in Canada, one in western Pennsylvania, and one that spans 26 states across the U.S.
All patients exposed to PM2.5 above a certain threshold had worse lung function and were more likely to die than patients exposed to lower levels of air pollution. But the group in western Pennsylvania, who were exposed to similar levels of PM2.5 but a higher proportion of human-made air pollutants than the other groups, had a mortality risk about 6 to10 times as high as the others.
Canadian patients exposed to average annual levels of PM2.5 higher than 8 micrograms per cubic meter had a mortality rate about 45% higher than those exposed to PM2.5 levels below the threshold. Patients in the broad U.S. group exposed to PM2.5 above the same threshold had a mortality rate 71% higher. Meanwhile, western Pennsylvanian patients exposed to pollution levels above the threshold had a mortality rate about 440% higher.
“Not all PM2.5 is the same."
Credit: Jacek Dylag/Unsplash
“That magnitude of difference was really surprising,” Goobie said. “Our patients in the western Pennsylvania cohort were almost universally exposed to the highest levels of total PM2.5, and about half of it was made up of primarily human-derived sources, whereas only about a quarter of the PM2.5 the Canadian cohort was exposed to was made up of those sources.”
Western Pennsylvania regularly sees some of the dirtiest air in the country, with much of the pollution stemming from industrial sources, in particular from the steel industry.
The researchers broke down the PM2.5 into seven components (along with some additional components that couldn’t be determined):
- Sulfate, which mainly comes from industrial pollution like steel and coal production and fossil fuel combustion (including natural gas and coal)
- Nitrate, which primarily comes from vehicle emissions and fossil fuel combustion
- Ammonium, which primarily comes from agriculture, industrial sources and fossil fuel combustion
- Black carbon, which primarily comes from fossil fuel and biomass burning, including wildfires
- Organic matter
- Ground soil particles
- Sea salt.
“We found that compared to patients in the rest of the U.S. and Canada, patients in western Pennsylvania were exposed to much higher proportions of sulfate, nitrate and ammonium,” Goobie said. “That explains why we see such a different mortality risk attributable to PM2.5.”
While the study focused on those already experiencing lung issues, Goobie said she suspects “that PM2.5 composition is also a critical component of health effects in wider populations.”
“Not all PM2.5 is the same,” she added. “We should emphasize our efforts to reduce emissions from the most harmful sources of these pollutants.”
The researchers used the American Thoracic Society’s recommended threshold of 8 micrograms per cubic meter for annual PM2.5 exposure, which is lower than the Environmental Protection Agency’s, or EPA, legal limit of 12 micrograms per cubic meter. The World Health Organization recommends an even lower annual threshold of 5 micrograms per cubic meter, and has stated that no level of PM2.5 exposure is safe.
The EPA reviews emerging research on air pollutants when considering new federal air pollution regulations. In its most most recent scientific assessment, the agency concluded that the evidence does not indicate that any one source or component is consistently more strongly related to health effects than the size of particles, but an EPA spokesperson told EHN that Goobie’s study “represents an advancement in the science by focusing not on relationships between individual PM2.5 components and health, as has traditionally been the focus of PM2.5 component research, but combinations of components.”
Saving lives by reducing industrial pollution
While treatment can slow progression, there’s no cure for fibrotic interstitial lung diseases. For the most common of the diseases, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the average survival rate is three to five years after diagnosis.
Goobie and her colleagues estimated how many lives could be prolonged if their patients weren’t exposed to PM2.5 levels above the 8 microgram per cubic meter annual threshold.
They found that among western Pennsylvania patients, eliminating exposure to levels of PM2.5 above that threshold could potentially subvert up to 70% of premature deaths. In contrast, eliminating those exposures in the Canadian group would only avoid 5% of premature deaths.
“Policymakers particularly need to be aware of potential risk imposed by industrial sources including the steel and coal industries, and should be advocating for, at a bare minimum, more stringent regulations on industrial polluters,” Goobie said.
In Allegheny County, which encompasses Pittsburgh, annual levels of PM2.5 rarely fall below the EPA’s threshold. The Allegheny County Health Department, which oversees air quality, has increased efforts to improve the region’s air quality in recent years, but declined to comment on the study, saying, “we do not comment or weigh in on the findings of third party reports.”
Patients with lung scarring diseases aren’t the only western Pennsylvanians vulnerable to the effects of air pollution. In Allegheny County alone, there are 25,928 kids and 100,546 adults with asthma, 70,844 people living with COPD, 100,456 people living with cardiovascular disease and 12,752 pregnant people, according to the American Lung Association.
“You can’t just dismiss hundreds of thousands of people who are especially vulnerable to air pollution,” Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a Pittsburgh-based collaborative of more than 50 regional and national environmental advocacy groups, told EHN. “The standards really should be geared toward protecting the most vulnerable members of our communities.”
New federal air pollution limits
EPA Administrator Michael Regan.Credit: Mecklenburg County/flickrGoobie’s study is timely, Mehalik said, because the EPA is expected to release new proposed federal limits on PM2.5 for public comment any day now.
“That’s the most powerful public health policy tool we have, which could lead to the most health benefits, particularly for those of us living in places like southwestern Pennsylvania,” Mehalik said.
The EPA is supposed to review federal air pollution standards every five years, but the standards currently in place are from 2012 because the agency declined to update them under the Trump administration.
The agency’s recent policy assessment on air pollution focused particularly on health risks to vulnerable populations like those covered in Goobie’s study, the EPA spokesperson said, and the agency is considering those findings while working toward proposing new federal limits on PM2.5 pollution.
It’s unclear what new air pollution limits the EPA could propose, but earlier this year the agency’s scientific advisory committee, a group of researchers and public health officials tasked with reviewing the science and advising the EPA on new regulations, recommended lowering the annual limit on PM2.5 from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to between 8 and 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
“To me, this study provides potent evidence for why these standards need to be lowered as much as possible to protect public health,” Mehalik said.
Environmental injustices
The study also found that in the western Pennsylvania and U.S.-wide patient groups, a higher proportion of non-white patients were exposed to higher levels of PM2.5 than white patients.
In the western Pennsylvania group, 13% of patients with high PM2.5 exposure were non-white, compared with 8% of patients exposed to lower levels of PM2.5. In the broader U.S. group, 14% exposed to high levels of PM2.5 were non-white, compared with 8% of patients exposed to lower levels of the pollutant.
“This indicates that researchers and doctors need to consider the intersectional impacts of pollution and environmental injustice alongside systemic racism and other factors that contribute to disparate exposures and health harms among our patients,” Goobie said.
This finding mirrors national trends: Across the U.S., Americans of color are exposed to higher levels of PM2.5 than white Americans, regardless of region or income level.
The EPA is also paying attention to environmental justice communities in its review of PM2.5. “Sharing the latest [particulate matter] concentration data is part of this effort, helping us give communities — especially those with environmental justice concerns — more complete information about their air quality,” an agency spokesperson added, noting that this information is publicly available through the agency’s Air Trends Report and its environmental justice mapping tool.
“Communities surrounding our most polluting facilities have higher rates of poverty, more people of color, and more people over the age of 65, making them especially vulnerable to the higher rates of pollution they face,” Mehalik said. “We need to invest in the health of these communities so families’ lives are not disrupted by illness and early death.”
Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania face unique environmental health challenges. This guide explores those challenges and how you can help address them.
What is environmental health?
Environmental health is the relationship between human health and our environment.
The field of environmental health is a branch of public health that looks at the health effects of everything from air pollution and water contamination to toxic chemicals in consumer products and climate change.
These issues impact the health, wellbeing and longevity of people who live in some places more than others — including Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania.
Why is environmental health important in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania?
Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania have long been home to extractive and manufacturing industries that substantially impact the environment and human health.
Long ago the region was home to the lumber industry, then some of the world’s first oil wells and coal mining, then steel mills, and now natural gas extraction and petrochemical plants.
Many cities, towns and neighborhoods throughout southwestern Pennsylvania were populated and built around these industries, so local politics historically have been led or heavily influenced by industry insiders. This resulted in policies that prioritize industrial growth, often at the expense of the environment and human health. The effects of these practices and policies still linger today.
The region also features unique topography with plentiful mountains and valleys that influence the way pollutants move through the environment (or don’t) and who is most impacted by them.
What this guide will cover
Air pollution in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania
- Health impacts
- Sources of air pollution
Water contamination in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania
- Health impacts
- Sources of water contamination
Climate change in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania
- Effects
- Health impacts
Environmental justice in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania
Solutions to environmental health problems in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania
Air pollution in Pittsburgh and southwestern PA
During the steel industry’s heyday, the air in Pittsburgh was so polluted it looked dark during the daytime.
The region’s air has improved drastically since the federal Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970. But southwestern Pennsylvania still regularly sees some of the most polluted air in the country.
What Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania’s air pollution problems mean for our health:
- Higher cancer risk
- Allegheny County is in the top 2% of all U.S. counties for cancer risk from air pollution
- Pennsylvania has the third highest cancer rate of all U.S. states, and Pittsburgh and surrounding regions have higher than state average rates of certain types of cancer — particularly those associated with exposure to pollution, including:
- Lung cancer
- Colon cancer
- Breast cancer
- Bladder cancer
- Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
- A 2021 study estimated that even if everyone in Allegheny County had quit smoking 20 years ago, lung cancer rates would only be 11% lower, further suggesting that pollution plays a significant role in the region’s lung cancer rates.
- For contrast, in the other 612 counties throughout the U.S. included in the study, lung cancer rates would have dropped an average of 62% if everyone had quit smoking 20 years ago.
- Asthma and other respiratory diseases
- Exposure to air pollution can cause childhood asthma, which is a huge problem in Pittsburgh
- In Pittsburgh’s most polluted neighborhoods, elementary schools have asthma rates as high as 42%—more than five times as high as the national rate
- A study of 1,200 elementary school students in Pittsburgh’s most polluted neighborhoods found that more than 70% of kids live in areas with air pollution levels that exceed World Health Organization guidelines
- Air pollution is also an important risk factor for other respiratory diseases, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which impacts more than 70,000 residents of Allegheny County
- From 2011 to 2017 (the most recent data available), COPD or asthma among older adults represented the highest rate of preventable emergency room visits in Allegheny County.
- Heart disease
- Air pollution is a key risk factor for cardiovascular health
- Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Allegheny County, and the county’s rate of death from heart disease is higher than the state average.
Bryan (left) and Ryan Latkanich (right) in front of their Fredericktown, Pennsylvania, home. Bryan has been fighting the fracking industry for years over pollution near his home.
Credit: Connor Mulvaney for Environmental Health News
- Mental illness
- Worrying about air pollution can cause stress or anxiety, but exposure to air pollution can also physically alter our brains in ways that increase the risk of mental illness
- From 2018 to 2020, 40% of adults in Allegheny County reported having one or more days where their mental health was "not good”
- These figures were higher in Allegheny County than in half of other Pennsylvania counties, and slightly higher than state averages.
- The town of Clairton, about 15 miles south of Pittsburgh, is in the worst 25% of U.S. cities for the percentage of adults experiencing 14 or more days of poor mental health each month.
- Clairton has particularly dirty air caused by emissions from a U.S. Steel plant.
- Autism
- Exposure to air pollution is linked to increased risk of autism spectrum disorder in children.
- In Allegheny County, the number of people with autism doubled from 2005 to 2011.
- Exposure to air pollution is linked to increased risk of autism spectrum disorder in children.
- Neurological disorders
- Exposure to air pollution is also linked to Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in older adults.
- Pregnancy complications
- Exposure to air pollution has been linked to pregnancy complications like preeclampsia, gestational hypertension and premature birth in general, and in Allegheny County specifically.
- Premature death.
- Exposure to air pollution is linked to increased risk of premature death (dying before the age of 75).
Terrie Baumgardner and Bob Schmetzer of the advocacy group Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community.
Nate Smallwood for Environmental Health News and Sierra Magazine
Sources of continued air pollution in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania include:
- Industrial emissions
- The Pittsburgh region is home to a number of large scale polluters.
- Just 10 industrial sites emit 60% of industrial air pollution in Allegheny County, according to the environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment.
- Clean air advocates have long complained that the region operates under a “pay to pollute” model.
- This means the fines companies receive for breaking clean air laws are so small that it’s cheaper to pay them than it would be to stop.
- For example, U.S. Steel was fined $1.8 million for pollution from the Clairton Coke Works in 2022. This is equivalent to a fine of $15.68 for a typical Pittsburgh household earning the 2019 median income of $48,711 — substantially less than a parking ticket.
- The Pittsburgh region is home to a number of large scale polluters.
- Oil and gas emissions
- Pennsylvania is second only to Texas in U.S. natural gas production, with much of the extraction in southwestern Pennsylvania
- The fracking industry emits around 5,648 tons of volatile organic compounds and more than 100,000 tons of methane every year
- Pennsylvania has no state laws regulating these types of emissions from oil and gas sources. Republican lawmakers have blocked recent efforts to change that.
- Exposure to emissions from oil and gas wells have been linked to a range of health impacts, from skin and respiratory irritation to organ damage and increased cancer risk
- A 2021 study by Environmental Health News found that families living near fracking wells in southwestern Pennsylvania are exposed to harmful chemicals through air pollution
- This was the first time anyone had looked at the levels of these chemicals in children living near fracking wells
- One nine-year old boy had markers for harmful chemicals in his body levels 91 times the national average
- Living near oil and gas wells also impacts mental health.
- Conventional oil and gas wells, both active and abandoned, also contribute substantially to the region’s air pollution problems, in addition to hastening climate change.
- Traffic emissions.
- Emissions from non-electric vehicles — particularly those that use diesel fuel— contribute to air pollution in significant ways
Water contamination in Pittsburgh and southwestern PA
The quality of surface water and drinking water also influence the environmental health of a population.
Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania have had longstanding issues with contaminated waterways, lead pipes and aging infrastructure. The region, like much of the U.S., also has problems with PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).
What Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania’s water pollution problems mean for our health:
- Higher cancer risk
- A national study on drinking water in 2019 found cancer-causing chemicals in Pittsburgh's drinking water, including some at levels three times the national average
- The same study estimated that carcinogens in drinking water cause up to 100,000 cancer cases in the U.S.
- Higher risk of learning disabilities
- No amount of lead exposure is safe, and lead exposure is linked to learning disabilities in children
- Higher risk of mental illness
- Emerging research suggests that childhood lead exposure can also lead to mental health impacts later in life
- Kids born in the 1970s experienced widespread exposure to high levels of lead during childhood due to leaded gasoline.
- In Allegheny, Butler, Washington, and Westmoreland counties—the four most populated counties in western Pennsylvania—there are around 371,656 people between the ages of 40 and 54 who likely experienced high levels of lead exposure as children and may now be experiencing mental health impacts as a result
- Subsequent generations of western Pennsylvanians have also been exposed to lead during early childhood through water contamination.
- Increased risk of other diseases from exposure to PFAS
- Exposure to PFAS is linked to health problems including kidney and testicular cancer, liver and thyroid problems, reproductive problems, pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, low birthweight, increased risk of birth defects, changes in cholesterol levels and hormones, and lower vaccine effectiveness in children.
- Risk of acute illness for vulnerable populations
- Certain groups are more likely to get sick from bacterial contaminants in drinking water, including infants, young children, people who are pregnant, older adults and people with weakened immune systems like those living with HIV, undergoing chemotherapy or taking transplant medications.
- Risk of illness or infection from contact with waterways during sewage overflows .
- Contact with sewage-contaminated waterways exposes people to E. coli and fecal coliform bacteria, which can cause infections and flu-like symptoms.
Downtown Pittsburgh at The Point, where the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela Rivers converge.
Credit: Kristina Marusic
Sources of water contamination in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania include:
- Lead pipes
- Despite recent progress on replacing lead pipes, lead was detected in 80% of Allegheny County water systems in 2019
- Lead levels in the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority's water rose steadily from 1999 to 2016
- Because of inconsistent testing, the region's water could have had dangerously high levels of lead contamination for years before it was caught during the city's infamous "lead crisis"
- In 2016, 18 Pennsylvania cities including Pittsburgh, Altoona, Johnstown and Erie had higher levels of lead exposure among children than those seen in Flint, Michigan, at the height of its lead crisis
- Allegheny County didn't mandate universal blood lead screening for kids until 2018, so it's difficult to assess just how widespread lead exposure was during that time period.
- The oil and gas industry
- Local waterways and drinking water are contaminated with radioactive substances and other toxic chemicals from the oil and gas industry
- Agricultural and mining runoff
- More than a third of Pennsylvania’s waterways are impaired in some way, largely due to chemical agricultural runoff and acid drainage from abandoned mines.
- Industrial sites
- A 2018 report ranked Pennsylvania second-worst in the nation for industrial pollution in waterways
- Several of the most-polluting industrial sites in the state are located in southwestern Pennsylvania
- PFAS contamination sites
- PFAS contamination often occurs near airports, military bases and industrial sites. The contaminants have impacted drinking water in a number of southwestern Pennsylvania communities including Moon Township, Coraopolis, Neville Island and Mckeesport
- There’s also evidence that PFAS used during fracking is impacting drinking water in rural southwestern Pennsylvania.
- Sewage overflows.
- An estimated 15 billion gallons of sewage-laden stormwater is released into Pittsburgh’s three rivers each year due to aging and inadequate infrastructure.
Climate change in Pittsburgh and southwestern PA
Youth climate protest 2019 in downtown Pittsburgh.
Credit: Kristina Marusic
The impacts of the climate crisis are being felt the world over, and Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania are no exception.
Climate change impacts in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania include:
- Flooding
- The Pittsburgh region has seen increasingly wet rainfalls and severe flooding, with more expected as climate change progresses
- More flooding creates additional challenges for the region’s aging infrastructure.
- Extreme weather events
- Record snow and rainfall, extreme heat, tornadoes and tropical storm flooding are on the rise in the region.
- Increases in disease-carrying insects.
- Climate change has led to increased populations of disease-carrying insects in Pennsylvania, including ticks and mosquitoes.
What climate change in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania means for our health:
- Loss of housing and increased numbers of unhoused residents
- Extreme weather and energy insecurity driven by climate change increase the risk of homelessness
- Pittsburgh is experiencing a growing homelessness crisis
- Unhoused people are also at greater risk of harmful impacts from extreme weather events driven by climate change.
- Increased risk of insect-borne diseases
- There have been numerous cases of western Pennsylvanians getting West Nile virus in recent years
- Lyme disease is on the rise in western Pennsylvania.
- Threats to children’s health.
- Children face disproportionately high risk of disease and harm from climate change.
Environmental injustice in Pittsburgh and southwestern PA
In Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, as with other parts of the country, racist practices like Jim Crow laws and redlining resulted in communities of color being exposed to higher levels of health-harming pollution.
These policies are outlawed today, but low-income communities and people of color in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania are still exposed to more pollution than their white counterparts as a result of those historically racist policies. The idea that these types of wrongs should be righted is referred to as environmental justice.
Environmental injustice issues in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania include:
- Higher rates of death from air pollution among lower-income and racial minority residents
- Higher rates of asthma among Black residents
- Blood lead levels in Allegheny County are declining overall, but not equitably: The percentage of children of color with confirmed elevated blood levels is six times greater than the percentage of white children with elevated blood lead levels
- The overlapping impacts of environmental and racial injustice lead to substantially worse public health outcomes for communities of color in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania.
Jeff Bryant and his daughter, Cheyenne, live in Marianna, one of the most heavily fracked counties in Pennsylvania. Cheyenne tested positive for biomarkers of exposure to toxic chemicals.
Photos by Nate Smallwood for Environmental Health News and Sierra Magazine
Solutions to environmental health problems in Pittsburgh and southwestern PA
These problems can feel overwhelming, but there are lots of groups working toward meaningful solutions — and they’re having some big wins.
Local researchers are seeking out better ways to monitor air pollution. Local students are advocating for renewable energy in their school districts. And residents are acting as effective watchdogs for major polluters, to name just a few examples.
We can all be part of those solutions by supporting the efforts that are already underway. Simple ways to do this include donating time or money to the organizations doing this work and signing up for their newsletters and/or following them on social media so it’s easy to respond to and share their calls to action when important legislation or decisions are at stake.
We can also let our local elected officials know that addressing these environmental health issues is a top priority for their constituents.
Who oversees air quality in Pittsburgh and southwestern PA?
- Allegheny County: The Allegheny County Health Department and County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who oversees the Health Department
- Surrounding regions: The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Contacting key decision makers
- Reach out to the Allegheny County Department of Health with specific air quality complaints, and ask county executive Rich Fitzgerald to prioritize improving the region’s air quality by strictly enforcing clean air laws
- Contact your local and state lawmakers via email, phone calls and/or social media to let them know that improving our air quality is a priority for their constituents.
- Contact polluters
- You can also directly contact major industrial polluters in our region via email, phone and/or social media to tell them their pollution is harming our health.
Organizations advocating for cleaner air and environmental justice in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania:
- Allegheny County Clean Air Now
- Breathe Project
- Clean Air Council
- Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP)
- OnePA
- PennEnvironment
- PennFuture
Organizations advocating for safer drinking water and environmental justice in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania:
Organizations advocating for climate solutions in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania: