Transcript: In Pittsburgh
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Sam Evans-Brown: Heads-up -- there are a couple stray swears in this episode. Okay, here’s the show.
Sam Evans-Brown: "This is Outside/In, and I'm Sam EB, and today, let’s hear from…
Stella: "hey Google!"
Sam Evans-Brown: Susan Peterson... and her daughter."
OPENING
Stella: What's the air quality today in Pittsburgh?
Susan Peterson: That's my three-year-old, Stella. It's 6:30 in the morning and she's hanging out in bed with me while I drink coffee. She's asking our Google speaker about the air quality.
GOOGLE: Would you like to connect to Air Check?
Stella: Yes. Yes! Yes, yes, yes.
Susan Peterson: Stella asks about the air quality every day, right after she asks about the weather,
GOOGLE: Let's get Air Check. The Air Quality Index for Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania is 52, which is considered moderate.
Susan Peterson: She learned it from me
Stella: Shit.
SUSAN: Not allowed to say that.
Susan Peterson: Having a three-year-old can be an unflattering mirror. A mirror of our bad habits, like a potty mouth. But a three-year-old also mirrors our fears, our deepest neuroses. In this case...
Stella: Hey, Google.
Susan Peterson: My three-year-old daughter is showing me just how far gone I am with something I've been super anxious about for months.
Stella: What's the air quality today in Pittsburgh?
People who have lived in Pittsburgh a long time will tell you the air used to be bad. Back when the steel industry was booming, the soot and smoke from the mills used to roll in so thick, you'd have to run outside into the yard and pull your wet laundry off the clothes lines.[1]#
But the old-timers will also tell you that these days, when you look up at the sky, Pittsburgh's clear.[2]#
Okay.
[Stella: Mommy?]
So why is my three year old asking about the air quality in Pittsburgh?
[Stella: Mommy?]
It’s because of me… I've been worried that the air we're breathing in [MUSIC: Joy Drops Not Drunk] Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania might be killing us.
Sam Evans-Brown: This is Outside/In a show about the Natural World and how we use it. I’m Sam Evans-Brown. Today on the show, hidden dangers are all around us: compounds in our water, our homes… our air. We live with these risks, usually, without a second thought, or even a first one... without considering the cloud of invisible hazards around us.
But what happens, when the invisible — suddenly, perhaps painfully — becomes visible?
Today on Outside/In, a story about clean air, from writer and producer Susan Peterson. What it was like to experience industrial air pollution for the first time... and what that told her about the risks she could tolerate, and the risks she couldn’t.
It’s a story about what we can do about the air we breathe.
Here’s Susan.
I used to live in Austin, Texas. I lived there with my husband, Sebastian, and we had a good life. We had good jobs and they paid us well. We had a little 1940 bungalow with wild flowers and a peach tree in the front yard. We even did all the fun stuff you imagine people doing in Austin. We went two-stepping at the broken spoke, and we went swimming at Barton Springs. We got margaritas at Julio's every Friday. We had good friends, the kind of friends who let you stay over while you’re going through a break-up and hold your legs while you're giving birth.
But everything changed when Stella was born
[MUSIC: Rainy Day Drone Glass Bowls]
The day she was born, the first thing I remember saying after the doctor pulled my baby out of my body was, "It worked." I meant the whole thing. The whole thing had worked from conception to this moment where I had a soft purple new person lying on my belly. All these tiny, complicated, low probability things had to happen in exactly the right order.
[heartbeat]
The whole thing had seemed pretty far fetched, but now that I'd seen the beginning of life, it was so clear how stupidly easy it would be for life to end.
And I realized that even though we had this good life, I was in my mid thirties and I'd never done the thing I dreamed of doing when I was a teenager. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write. I wanted Stella to know me that way. Like on career day in second grade, I wanted her to tell her class that her mom's a writer. And what if I died before I ever even gave it a shot?
And I also really got that my parents were going to die. I'd lived more than a thousand miles away from them for half my life -- and now, like a lot of other new parents, I wanted to live closer to them.
So I wanted to try to be a writer and I wanted us to live closer to my parents. And Pittsburgh [MUSIC: Joy Drops Not Drunk] was the unlikely solution to both of these problems. I got accepted into a writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, and it was only a two hour drive from my parents' house.
Now coming from Austin, Pittsburgh, isn't the most obvious destination.
When I was a kid, the only thing my mom ever said about it was,
MOM: Sun don't shine in Pittsburgh.
Susan Peterson: And let's face it, the word "Pittsburgh" sounds like the name of a municipal landfill. If we were going to move there, I really had to sell it to myself. And I had to sell it to my husband, Sebastian too.
So I did some research and I basically turned into a walking chamber of commerce promo video for Pittsburgh.
[music: Fresh Lift, Shane Ivers]
Forbes magazine named Pittsburgh a most livable city.[3] They have one of the largest urban tree canopies in the country.[4]# There are four seasons and old-money cultural institutions. There are over 60 robotics companies.[5]# That's so many robots.
I made these pitches multiple times a day. And at the end of each pitch, I traced my hand across the horizon, like I had a color of the rainbow trailing from each fingertip.
Then I'd sing this goofy tagline:
SUSAN: (singing) In Pittsburgh …
Life in Austin was good, but Pittsburgh was where I was going to become a writer. Where I'd be close to my parents. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was where I was going to live out my dreams before I died.
SUSAN: (singing) In Pittsburgh …
A few weeks after we moved to Pittsburgh, I'm standing barefoot on the porch of our new house. When I first noticed the smell, Stella is going to the park with my husband Sebastian and I've stepped outside to see them off. I'm about to go back inside, when I noticed that it stinks out here.
It smells like a ripe porta-potty: Chemicals. Sulfur. Sewage. I walked down the porch steps looking for something that will explain the stink and exploded trash bag or something. There's no sign of the source, but it's everywhere. The air is a little thick, a little hazy, a little humid. I don't know what it is yet, but I already have this feeling like, Oh, God, what have I done?
[In Pittsburghhhh]
[Hey Google]
[fade out bird ambi]
It doesn’t take long to figure out what the smell is: it’s a gas called hydrogen sulfide.[6] It drifts in from a manufacturing plant in a small town called Clairton, about 15 miles south, down in the Mon River Valley, the Clairton Coke Works.[7] [8] The Coke Works is a part of the old Pittsburgh steel industry. From a distance, it kind of looks like that old board game mouse trap. It's got conveyor belts and chutes carrying materials up and down. Puffing smoke stacks, spreading rust, peeling paint.[9] It's got a reputation for violating pollution regulations.[10] Some of the equipment has been around since it was built in 1955.[11]
I've never heard of the thing they make at the plant: "coke." I know it can't be cocaine coke. A few more internet clicks, and I learn coke is the fuel they use in the blast furnaces at the steel mills.[12] To make it, you bake coal in these giant industrial ovens to burn off the impurities.[13] What's left is coke, and you can't really make steel without it.[14] And all those coke oven emissions -- all the particles and tar[15] and benzene and the hydrogen sulfide[16] that smells like a port-a-potty - all that stuff has to go somewhere. And some of it goes into the air around here.
When the wind is blowing from the Southeast, pollution from the Coke works, rolls up the river valley and into my neighborhood.[17] The smell wafts through our bedroom windows. It floats in while we're at the playground. It makes me wonder whether I should be going on my morning run.
With the port-a-potty smell drifting in a couple of times a week,[18] it's hard not to think about the air. And I do more than just think about it. I talk about it—all the time. And FYI, it’s hard to make friends in a new city when your go-to conversation topic is air quality.
So I talk to people whose job it is to talk about air quality. I talk to doctors…
LINDA WIGINGTON: the way that a lot of pollutants enter our bodies is by using particles as the train,
Susan Peterson: I talk to activists….
PRESTO: higher PM 2.5 exposure leads to basically shorter lifespans.
LINDA WIGINGTON: heart disease, lung disease, irregular heart beat, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, respiratory symptoms,
Susan Peterson: I talk to air quality researchers..
RASHMI BALIGA: I mean, the effects are pretty well-documented.
Susan Peterson: … and atmospheric particle scientists.
LINDA WIGINGTON: They're cancers for sure. There's also low birth weight, premature birth, different birth defects.
It turns out, the smell -- the hydrogen sulfide gas -- isn’t really what hurts you -- it’s the thing that gets you to pay attention. When the air smells bad around here, it usually means that plumes of industrial pollution are trapped c lose to the ground by a weather thing called a temperature inversion.[19] What happens is a layer of warm air settles over the valley like a lid, which traps cooler air -- and air pollution -- down below. In Pittsburgh, there are over a 150 temperature inversions a year.[20]# And when there’s an inversion, when you can smell the air, there are usually higher levels of something called fine particulate matter.[21] It’s basically just tiny specks of soot, which is one of the most harmful kinds of air pollution.
The experts I talk to all call it PM 2.5 -- which means particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter. That’s small enough that 30 of them can fit inside the cross-section of a human hair.[22]# And the tininess is what makes PM 2.5. so dangerous. When you breathe, particles that small can penetrate deep into your lungs and pass into your bloodstream. They can also get in through your nose: they travel up the olfactory nerve … directly into your brain.
Researchers have known for a long time that PM 2.5 exposure causes asthma and lung cancer and cardiac disease.[23] But newer research has linked it to a very long and very scary and ever-growing list of diseases and health effects, including brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.[24]
PM 2.5. doesn’t just come from the Coke Works. It’s produced pretty much anytime you burn stuff: big, obvious stuff like fossil fuels and forests -- but also small, not so obvious stuff you burn in your house like natural gas and birthday candles and popcorn.
[popcorn sfx]
PM 2.5. can also be just dust, like from a construction site or thrown off by passing cars -- and it’s also produced when industrial emissions like nitrogen and sulfur oxides react in the air.[25]
So basically what I learn is that particle pollution—comes from everything. It’s everywhere. It steals your breath and chips away at your lifespan. And there’s no safe level.[26] #
[popcorn winds down/open microwave door sound]
When it comes to Pittsburgh specifically, it’s nothing like some of the big cities overseas where you can see really thick smog for a lot of the year. Thanks to the Clean Air Act, the US has cleaner air than a lot of the world.[27]# But Pittsburgh does have some of the dirtiest air in the country…[28]# And people that live closest to industry are the most exposed. In Clairton, people face more than 10 times the cancer risk from hazardous air pollutants than people living in towns just a few miles away.[29] And Clairton is like a lot of communities near industrial facilities: the people who live there are disproportionately people of color and low-income.[30]
Children are disproportionately impacted, too. Every time I smell the portapotty smell, I think about this article I read, about how in Allegheny County we’re exposed to 99 percent more coke oven emissions than the rest of the U.S. The article’s mostly about how it affects kids -- (MUSIC: Rainy Day Drone Glass Bowls) how their bodies are more sensitive and they breathe 4 times more air than adults. The article has a photo of the Clairton Coke Works.[31] And then it has another one: a photo of two little girls, both pediatric cancer patients. They're bald and they're looking out the hospital window over the Pittsburgh skyline.
Susan Peterson:
One of the researchers I meet is an immunologist named Dr. Deborah Gentile. We meet up for breakfast at a diner to talk about an asthma study she did in the local schools.
I recorded our interview with my phone. So the sound isn't great.
[diner interview clip]
A lot of the kids in her study lived within a couple miles of an industrial facility, like a coal-fired power plant or the Claritin Coke works. And what she learned was that the kids had very, very high asthma rates. 22% of them had asthma. That's more than two times the average rate for the state of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Gentile grew up an hour and a half west of here, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh has been her home since medical school. She’s got family and deep roots here. I’m still picking at my toast when I ask her how she feels about living in Pittsburgh with everything she knows about the air.
GENTILE: I think about it all the time. I think this is really a foolish place to be living.
Susan Peterson: I think this is a really foolish place to be living. She keeps talking, but I can't hear anything else. My ears filled with white noise. My skin feels staticky. I'm heavy and boneless. Like I'm sinking into the chair. I don't want my stupid toast anymore.
And after I leave her words echo in my mind.
SUSAN: This is really a foolish place to be living
Susan Peterson: and I developed the worst superpower ever I can see invisible particulate matter pollution everywhere, and it ruins everything good.
Susan Peterson: When the leaves turn in the fall, I can't see the colors. I can only see the leaf blowers blowing particulate matter into the air
Susan Peterson: When I'm waiting at the bus stop with Stella, all I can see are the tailpipes of the passing buses. Exhausting diesel fumes right into her excited breathing face.
Susan Peterson: At night, I sneak into Stella's room to listen to her breathe. I'm trying to hear the slightest snag or wheezing, imagining the creeping damage to her fresh pink lungs. (MUSIC: Come as you were 1 min loose guitar)
I’m homesick. I miss our life in Texas -- the peach tree. The dear friends, the margaritas at Julio’s. AND, I'm filled with unbearable guilt because I asked my family to leave.
My shimmering dream is like every other dream, something you wake up from in the bed, you've always slept in with bad breath and rumpled hair and your three-year-old asking about the air quality. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to navigate this. What could I do … about the air?
Sam Evans-Brown: The questions Susan Peterson started asking, and what she decided to do about it - that’s coming up after a break.
BREAK
Sam Evans-Brown: This is Outside/In. I’m Sam Evans-Brown. Let’s pick up the story of Susan Peterson, who moved her husband and three-year-old to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and got a crash course in air pollution and fine particulate matter… and wondered, what was this doing to her family? And what could she do about it?
Here’s Susan Peterson.
SUSAN: Okay. I am recording I'm at the Upper St. Clair Township Complex.
Susan Peterson: I'm about to go into my first meeting with a group I hope can help me learn how to live in Pittsburgh -- how to live with this air pollution. Stella’s still asking about the air quality index every day -- and Sebastian’s exhausted -- and I’m frankly miserable. The anxiety I’ve been feeling isn’t like me -- and I’m worried that it’s way out of proportion. I need some perspective.
SUSAN: I'm looking for the multipurpose room. I've got a meeting there.
LIBRARY STAFF: That's downstairs.
(SOUND: room ambi, fading down during narration, up for Diane Hall's "lines")
Susan Peterson: I find a beige on beige room with buzzing, fluorescent tube lights and a few people milling around a snack table.
I grab a few chocolate covered almonds. Then find a seat at one of the folding tables arranged like a squared-off horseshoe.
The whole thing has a church social hour vibe until I see what’s in this grocery bag with my name on it. I go through it with the woman sitting next to me.
DIANE HALL: Okay. This says CO2 monitor.
Susan Peterson: The bag is filled with air quality sensors.
DIANE HALL: Okay. These are digital radon detectors
Susan Peterson: The meeting is with a group that trains Pittsburghers in citizen science. They loan out equipment and teach people to measure air pollution at home
And then there's a defender sealed lithium battery powered, low level CO monitor.
The group goes by the name ROCIS, like raucous noise or raucous party, but it's spelled R O C I S. It's an acronym for their full name, which is sort of the opposite of a raucous party. It stands for "Reducing Outdoor Contaminants in Indoor Spaces.”
DIANE HALL: This better, not be too high tech
So just to be clear, it's 6:00 PM. It's cold and dark. And I've skipped dinner with my family to drive 40 minutes for a meeting with a group called reducing outdoor contaminants in indoor spaces. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I hatched this move to Pittsburgh … but … clearly … I need help navigating this.
We go around do intros and the church social hour vibe turns a little into a 12-step program vibe.
LINDA WIGINGTON: So let's start with you, David.
DAVID BERNARD: Dave Bernard. I live in Upper St. Clair. I've lived here for 40 some years.
GERMAINE: I am a 14-year resident of Clairton...
LEILA: I'm a master's student at Carnegie Mellon. I'm pursuing my degree in building performance and diagnostics.
ANNE: I purchased a home in Coreopsis a couple of winters ago, and I was so excited until I, I began to smell these odors.
LARYN: I'm Lauren fender and I'm just avidly interested. And all kinds of good stuff.
LINDA WIGINGTON: So Susan, you're next.
Susan Peterson: And then, it’s my turn.
SUSAN: So I'm--as a newcomer to Pittsburgh--um, I think some of the air quality stuff here really blindsided me. I, I, um, I've been, I've been--
Susan Peterson: I'm stammering through a simple introduction.
SUSAN: And it's, and so it's, so it's...
Susan Peterson: I'm embarrassed that I’ve been so anxious. Everyone else seems to be sort of well-adapted and … curious. I feel fearful and fragile and ridiculous.
SUSAN: But we, I mean, like, as, as...
Susan Peterson: I don't want anyone to know that I creep around the house, listening to my family members breathe.
As the rest of the meeting unfolds, I’m more and more impressed with ROCIS. It seems they’re trying to address exactly what I’ve run up against: If you live in southwestern PA -- if this is your home, and you can’t or won’t just move away -- what can you do about the air?
It seems first, (MUSIC: Neon Drip Stems) you have to understand your exposure -- which is complicated. Everyone’s specific air pollution cocktail is different: it depends on a lot of stuff, like where you live or how drafty your place is or whether you have central air. And it’s also really complicated and expensive to measure air pollution -- it requires specialized equipment -- money to buy it -- and knowledge to interpret the results. And then -- let’s just imagine a person was able to put all of that together -- there’s just not enough information on reasonable, accessible, low-cost ways to address what you find. What even works? Can you clean your air?
So ROCIS has designed a free program where they set up a three-week training in citizen science and gather local residents together in a cohort like the one I’ve joined. They lend out air pollution sensors -- train people -- and help us interpret the data. Then, they help us figure out how to reduce our exposure to bad air -- and all the while, they’re connecting us to the broader network of air quality activism in Pittsburgh -- which is extensive and sophisticated.
In the last few years, ROCIS has offered this training over 40 times to several hundred local people[32]# They’re even part of a partnership that distributes portable air cleaners to Clairton residents[33] - so, yes, you can clean your air.
Still, there are limits. It’s a pretty small initiative -- and being a part of a training cohort is a big commitment: there are meetings, twice a day data logging, uploading. A good number of the people in my group seem to be retired.
[MUSIC: ewa valley no guitar]
But I’m glad I’m here. And as I pack up to go home, I notice it’s been strangely comforting to talk about air quality for the last two hours. Which is weird, because it’s not like there was any good news: we covered particle toxicity and volatile organic compounds and the bad regulatory environment in Pittsburgh. But maybe trying not to talk about it was making me lonely. And on my way home I feel a spark of something very hopeful and very geeky, like, I’m gonna do citizen science! If I ever said “squee,” the feeling would be something like that.
Sensor setup
SUSAN: (SOUND: Loud CO monitor beep) Whoa, that was really loud.
Susan Peterson: The next night at home, I set up all the equipment that came in my grocery bag of air quality sensors.
SUSAN: Dammit.
Susan Peterson: We've got sensors for carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and radon,
SUSAN: I mean, I sort of feel like I shouldn't be putting it on top of the boiler, but
Susan Peterson: and then three particles sensors for my favorite pollutant. Fine particulate matter.
SUSAN: (SOUND: pressing buttons like setting a clock radio) Uh, hey Google. (SOUND: Google beep) What's the date today?
Susan Peterson: once everything's set up, we're supposed to go around with a clipboard and take readings twice a day for three weeks. The idea is that first we observe our air pollution. And then we learn how to reduce our exposure to it.
SUSAN: Yeah. What do you think of my monitors?
STELLA: Good. I want to see number three 'cause I'm three.
SUSAN: You want to see number three cause you're three?
STELLA: Yeah.
SUSAN: Well, let's look for a three. Hup! I see a three right here. Thirty percent humidity. There's a number three.
STELLA: Oh.
First sensor reading
Susan Peterson: the next morning, I go around and take my first readings from all the sensors. When I look at the two particles sensors inside, I don't understand what the numbers mean at first,
SUSAN: 497, 511, 549
Susan Peterson: but on the back of the particle sensor, there's a key that gives me a score either. Excellent. Very good. Good, fair, poor, or very poor inside are areas in the fair range. Feels kind of like adequate or satisfactory. Three out of five stars. I wouldn't go to that restaurant. When I go outside of the porch. The air has the port-a-potty smell. I take my first reading from the outdoor sensor.
SUSAN: So the particle counts outdoors right now are... 3000.
Susan Peterson: In the “very poor” range. Which makes sense - that day, there's a code orange air pollution alert for Clairton where the Coke Works is.[34] And I feel mixed, partly affirmed, like, okay, I haven't been worrying about nothing and partly terrible. Like, okay. This is really as bad as I thought it was.
When the air quality is at these levels, the EPA says it’s “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” -- which include people with heart or lung disease, older adults, teenagers, children ... Which sounds scary, but then I look at the monitors across the river from the Coke Works, and the levels were even higher there overnight -- they were all the way into the range the EPA describes as “Unhealthy for Everyone.” When pollution spikes near the Coke Works, especially during a temperature inversion, it spikes all over town, and we’re all kind of in it together.
One afternoon, I visit one of the women in the ROCIS training group, Rashmi Baliga, a grad student from India who studies building performance and indoor air quality at Carnegie Mellon. Her apartment is off a busy road just a mile from my house, up on the seventh floor.
RASHMI: Like I actually like it up here. You can see everything.
Susan Peterson: When I get there, I think I want to ask her a bunch of technical questions, as if more information is what I really need.
RASHMI: Forced air is kind of when you have a system that's actually driving outside air into the building and circulating it constantly through your house...
Susan Peterson: But more than her expertise, I really want to know how she copes with knowing as much about air quality as she does.
RASHMI: So in India, I come from a very polluted city called Mumbai. So the air quality here is really good as far as I'm concerned.
SUSAN: I, I wonder, um, do you feel does knowing what you know about air pollution and air quality... does it ever, do you ever, do you ever find yourself getting like fearful or paranoid?
RASHMI: Not really. Because I've had, uh, my grandparents live in Bangalore, which has moderately bad air quality, like definitely worse than Pittsburgh. And they're like 86 and 87. So like, I just feel like, yeah, I mean, yeah, there's health consequences, but it's not like you'll die from it right away.
As I leave Rashmi’s place, (MUSIC: Joy Drops Not Drunk) I think about her … equanimity … and my total lack of it. It’s weird, I tolerate plenty of other risks without freaking out: eating potato chips and riding my bike and pesticides on my food … and getting into this car. So why does air pollution have such a hold on me? Maybe it’s because … it’s the first time in my life I’ve had to deal with it. Or maybe it's because it's invisible and everywhere … or the huge range of diseases it’s linked to.
Or maybe it's because air pollution gets away with it. It chips away at your life with every breath, but you can’t name it as a cause of death -- because air pollution is linked to complex diseases that can’t really be pinned to a single risk factor.[35] [36] #
But protecting people from complex diseases that can’t really be pinned to a single risk factor … that sounds like a job for government. For regulators. I’ve been so singularly obsessed with trying to understand this I haven’t even allowed myself to be pissed. And I’m pissed. The Coke Works violates the Allegheny County Health Department’s rules several times a day[37] [38]#[39]
And they get away with it in part because the local fines are too low. An advocate told me that the County fines U.S. Steel around a million dollars a year … and U.S. Steel just pays it …[40] because it would cost a billion dollars to upgrade the plant. There are federal laws to clean up air pollution too, but it's up to local governments to carry them out ... and big companies are very good at pressuring local regulators to go slow on requiring changes.[41]
If the governments that are supposed to be doing science and assessing risk and regulating polluting industries aren’t effective, it’s no wonder that I’ve been completely obsessed with air quality for the last few months. But still -- I feel like I can’t say with any confidence just how bad the air is around here. It’s like I can’t trust my senses: The air smells bad. And looks bad. And measures bad. But the regulators just keep letting the Coke Works break the rules,[42]# so it must not be that bad … right? I feel gaslit.
SUSAN: I am crazy impressed by this program. I'm just, I dunno...
Susan Peterson: A few days later, I'm looking at a chart of all the data everyone in the ROCIS group has been collecting -- the particle counts from the sensors on all our porches. I'm so excited about it, I have to show it to Sebastian.
SUSAN: So you can like, you can zoom in on this... did you see that?
SEBASTIAN: Yeah, no, that's a good visualization.
SUSAN: Also you can choose between a linear and a logarithmic scale.
Susan Peterson: I'm geeking out --
SUSAN: I actually like the linear better.
Susan Peterson: but I'm also starting to feel unstuck.
SUSAN: There are a bunch of like regular people in Western PA running around looking at charts of their air quality data. Like, that’s amazing.
Susan Peterson: two weeks ago. I'd never heard of picocuries per liter. Looking at the chart, seeing how pollution levels rise and fall, I feel for the first time, like, if I can understand this, maybe I can work with it. I actually feel sort of empowered. And I’m not the only one. At the ROCIS meeting, now we're all throwing around picocuries per liter and parts per million and parts per billion like they were our shoe sizes.
EMILY: My lowest was five 60 and my highest was 10 29.
GERMAINE: My highest number was 20, 2200.
SAM: Saturday morning was the high of 11,002 38.
And Linda, the ROCIS leader, has a lot of ideas for how to deal with our picocuries and particles. Not everyone can afford or access this stuff: But it seems there’s almost always something you can do. If you can’t afford an air cleaner, she shows us how to DIY one using a box fan and a filter. You can And it doesn’t cost anything to pay attention to the air quality forecasts and make decisions about when to open and close your windows.
Susan Peterson: As for us, we've got a little induction hotplate that we’re using now instead of our gas stove. That cost $60. We also got a couple of portable air cleaners, one behind the yellow chair in the living room and another upstairs. They cost $200 apiece, and you have to replace the $40 filter once a year.
SUSAN: And the one on the inside is reading 206.
Susan Peterson: With the new equipment, the house has kind of a new ambience at night. We’re still borrowing the air sensors from ROCIS, so they make this low whirring sound and our new air filters spin up and down in response to pollution levels.
(MUSIC: Arlan Vale)
And then there's a new blue glow cast by all the indicator lights. It's kind of like the deck of a space station.
[robot voice] Sealed off. Conditions monitored. Intake filtered.
I'm feeling some relief and I'm feeling like I have a little bit of control and I also feel terrible. We've spent about five hundred dollars, but I feel like one of those billionaires with a New Zealand climate apocalypse bunker. I don't want to be sealed off. I want to be permeable. And it's not only that the spaceship is only for my family. It's not lost on me that plugging in the air filters we have -- even though they're energy star certified -- means there's just a little more electric load on the grid. And that grid includes a coal-fired power plant, a few miles East of here in someone else's backyard. In this way, we're kind of not all in it together. The spaceship feels pretty messed up and I feel like I've done it on someone else's back.
But the other way I feel about it is that it takes a long time to become a full citizen of a place -- to accept its problems along with its promise. I’ve been here just a few months. And so I'm trying to follow in the footsteps of people here who know better than I do: people who have been fighting for cleaner air for decades, people who have driven so much change and learned how families can protect themselves in the meantime. I’m learning to support their activism -- in small ways -- but it’s part of a longer, bigger, more complicated story I'm only beginning to understand.
SUSAN: So outside the ultra fine particles are into the high six thousands. And inside the ultra-fine particles are 200. So that's like a 34 fold difference
Susan Peterson: I don’t want the spaceship, but I also don't miss creeping around listening to everyone breathe.
STELLA: hey Google. Is it going to be summer today?
Susan Peterson: It's not quite summer yet, but it's spring. And it's five weeks into the pandemic lockdown. Stella's school is closed and she and I have a new routine. We go on a hike every morning.
STELLA: C'mon, let's go.
Susan Peterson: Well, not every morning. We hike the mornings the air isn't too polluted.
STELLA: Why's it slippy right here?
SUSAN: It just is. There's some mud.
Susan Peterson: I've actually been pretty calm about the pandemic. Maybe it's because I already burned through my whole anxiety budget for tiny invisible things flying through the air. Or maybe it's because the lockdown feels like an appropriate response to a global pandemic. With the air pollution, I felt like, why isn't anyone doing anything? How are we just standing in line for bagels in this industrial stench and not doing anything? But of course people were doing something. I just couldn't see it.
Susan Peterson: Now that everything's closed, there's so much I miss about our Pittsburgh neighborhood. I miss my table at the library, the snow pea shoots at the Taiwanese place. I miss the naked ladies in the locker room at the Jewish Community Center.
SUSAN: So follow me. Do you see how I'm going to step on these stones?
Susan Peterson: But going on these hikes, we make new discoveries, magenta magnolias in full bloom, a screech owl in a hollow tree, asparagus growing in a public park. [whisper] I think I'm falling in love with Pittsburgh.
SUSAN: Step on the stones, not the mud. I'll hold your hand. Then take a big step. Great job. You made it.
SUSAN: Oh, those are dandelions after they have, so they start off yellow and then when they go to seed, they do this and you can blow them, try blowing. Blow. (STELLA blowing)
STELLA: It's like bubbles.
SUSAN: It is like bubbles.
There's a thing in psychology called shifting baseline syndrome. It describes the way we reset the way we forget what we were used to and adjust to a new normal. It's one of the ways we're psychologically resilient, but it's also how we get used to circumstances that we couldn't imagine ever getting used to.
Like worse and worse wildfire seasons. Higher and higher floodwaters, hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter summers. It's how we get used to living in a global pandemic. Or in a place with industrial air pollution. Our baseline shifts basically so we can survive. It's a good thing to learn to live with something you can't control, but learning to live with it also means you just live with it.
SUSAN: Here's another one.
STELLA: Yeah, right here!
SUSAN: Yep.
STELLA: You blow.
CREDITS
Sam Evans-Brown: This episode was written, produced, and mixed by Susan Peterson, and edited by Justine Paradis, with help from Taylor Quimby, Felix Poon, and me, Sam Evans-Brown.
Erika Janik is our executive producer.
Special thanks to Erin Anderson, Rashmi Baliga, Germaine Gooden-Patterson, Melanie Meade, Matt Mehalik, Johnie Perryman, Albert Presto, Julianne Sato-Parker, Art Thomas, Linda Wigington, Boen Wang, and everyone in Susan’s ROCIS cohort -- thank you for giving your permission to be recorded for this episode.
Outside/In is a member-supported show. If you’d like to support work like this, you can find a link to donate on our website, outsideinradio.org.
Music in the show came from The Joy Drops, Shane Ivers and Blue Dot Sessions.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a member-supported production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
[1] Interview with Arthur “Art” Thomas, 70-year Clairton resident, 10/5/19.
[2]https://www.wesa.fm/environment-energy/2018-08-01/pittsburghs-air-quality-better-than-the-past-but-not-yet-clean “[John] Zavacky, a lifelong Pittsburgher, says the air quality is much better than it used to be. He can distinctly remember the city’s smoggy past. ‘I mean, you can look out and see whatever you’re looking at,’ he said. ‘Before, with all the smoke and the stuff from the coke ovens, it was bad. The steel mills, especially the coke ovens, once they fired up there was smoke, flames, all over Hazelwood, Oakland, Greenfield, Squirrel Hill.’”
[3]https://www.forbes.com/2010/04/29/cities-livable-pittsburgh-lifestyle-real-estate-top-ten-jobs-crime-income_slide.html?sh=6660e87a56e0
[4] https://www.geographyrealm.com/urban-tree-canopy-maps/
[5]https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2018/03/29/robotics-pittsburgh-seegrid-re2-platypus-cmu-skycision/stories/201803290055
[6] https://smellpgh.org/analysis "Odor descriptions and symptoms were frequently linked to hydrogen sulfide, which has a "rotten egg" smell and is known to cause symptoms of headaches, dizziness, eye irritation, sore throat, cough, nausea, and shortness of breath (Reiffenstein et al., 1992; Guidotti, 2010)."
[7]https://gasp-pgh.org/2018/09/26/health-department-tracks-down-source-of-rotten-egg-hydrogen-sulfide-emissions/ The study also revealed that most of the highest hourly H2S, SO2, benzene, and PM2.5 readings, at the Liberty monitor, typically came from the south, south-southwest, and southwest—which is in the general upwind direction of U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works.
[8]https://gasp-pgh.org/wp-content/uploads/Evaluation-of-Hydrogen-Sulfide-Concentrations-at-Liberty-Borough-Monitoring-Station-1.pdf ACHD concludes that, ‘Based on location and amount of reported emissions from USS Clairton, it is likely a substantial contributor to the H2S, SO2, benzene, and PM2.5 concentrations.’
[9]https://media2.fdncms.com/pittsburgh/imager/u/original/19379626/us_steel_clairton_works_clairton_pa.jpg
[10]https://www.alleghenyfront.org/allegheny-county-fines-u-s-steel-360000-for-coke-plant-violations/ "Allegheny County Fines U.S. Steel $360,000 for Coke Plant Violations"
[11]https://www.publicsource.org/pennfuture-threatens-to-sue-u-s-steel-over-violations-at-clairton-coke-works/ "Located 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works operates 10 coke batteries—the oldest ones have been in use since 1955."
[12] https://pacokeovens.org/what-is-coke/ "Coke is produced by heating coal at high temperatures, for long periods of time. This heating is called “thermal distillation” or “pyrolysis.” In order to produce coke that will be used in blast furnaces, coal is usually thermally distilled for 15 to 18 hours, but the process can take up to 36 hours."
[13] https://www.fedsteel.com/our-blog/how-does-coke-and-coal-play-into-steel-making/
"Coke is used as a fuel and a reducing agent in melting iron ore. It is produced by baking coal until it becomes carbon by burning off impurities without burning up the coal itself. "
[14] https://grist.org/energy/boston-metal-taking-coal-out-of-steel/ “About 70 percent of steel today is made how it’s always been made: in giant, extremely hot furnaces. Purified coal, or “coke,” is heated and melted with iron oxide and limestone, then injected with oxygen to reduce the carbon content of the mixture and to remove impurities. Almost all other steel is made from scrap metal that’s melted down in an electric arc furnace.”
[15]https://monvalley.uss.com/uss/portal/monvalley/monvalleyworks/cokemakingprocess/!ut/p/z1/jZBNC4JAFEV_jVvfm5LQdlPWog-worS3CY1pFNSRccq_n9gqqMG7e49z4HKBIAGq01chU1OoOi37-0qzW4C45AvGEVd7jocTY8E6urAw9CC2AdsJAo3x8U_4CJ9syO7o2YGh4gBYOmyAZKmyzx68zqa-BNLiIbTQ7lP379yYpp076GDXda5USpbCvavKwV9KrloDyTcJTXVOsIiq2G_5G-SG3X0!/dz/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/ "The coking process generates the following main volatiles as byproducts: coke oven gas, tar, ammonium sulfate, benzol, toluol and naphtha."
[16] https://pacokeovens.org/what-is-coke/nature-and-extent-of-air-emission/ "Coke oven facilities generate fine particulates, which cause premature mortality" / "Emissions from door leakages are the largest source of fugitive emissions from a coke oven battery and are a significant source of benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emissions. Door emissions also may contain PM, CO, SO2, H2S [hydrogen sulfide], and NH3."
[17] https://archive.triblive.com/news/monongahela-valley-wind-bad-for-lungs-cmu-says/ “Wind from the southeast is nearly six times as likely to carry pollution that elevates the amount of lung-clogging soot in the air around East End neighborhoods. The scientists believe this is because pollution from U.S. Steel's coke works in Clairton and Braddock funnels up the valley into Pittsburgh along breezes from the south.” (I live in the East End)
[18]https://smellpgh.org/visualization?share=true&date=20191029&zoom=11&latLng=40.394,-79.914&city_id=1 The time of the story is fall 2019. According to the Smell PGH app from Carnegie Mellon, in October 2019 (for example), there were 10 days with very high numbers of smell reports (color-coded black in the visualization).
[19] https://plumepgh.org/model_data.html “While no weather model is perfect, these modeled pollution paths show striking correspondence with Smell Pittsburgh reports and total-VOC air monitors. The models show how emissions maintain significant concentration in the air even miles from a source, especially on days when the ground is colder than the upper level atmosphere, causing pollution to concentrate close to the ground in a common condition known as an inversion. The greater Pittsburgh area experiences an average of around 157 inversion days per year. Our model shows the four largest emitters of SO2 and other sulfur oxides in Allegheny County, which correlates strongly with smell reports and also health impacts.”
[20]https://alleghenycounty.us/uploadedFiles/Allegheny_Home/Health_Department/Programs/Air_Quality/AnnualSfcTempInversionAnalysis-2018.pdf Mean annual number of temperature inversions, 2009-2018: 157
[21] https://www.ehn.org/climate-change-inversions-and-air-pollution-2644464249.html “Heat waves often lead to higher ozone levels, while temperature inversions tend to have a stronger impact on particulate matter pollution.”
[22] https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics "PM2.5 : fine inhalable particles, with diameters that are generally 2.5 micrometers and smaller. How small is 2.5 micrometers? Think about a single hair from your head. The average human hair is about 70 micrometers in diameter – making it 30 times larger than the largest fine particle."
[23] https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/what-makes-air-unhealthy/particle-pollution “Particle pollution can increase the risk of heart disease, lung cancer and asthma attacks”
[24] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/06/air-pollution-dementia-alzheimers-brain/
[25] https://www.pca.state.mn.us/air/sulfur-dioxide-so2 https://www.pca.state.mn.us/air/nitrogen-dioxide-no2 “Like nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide can create secondary pollutants once released into the air. Secondary pollutants formed with sulfur dioxide include sulfate aerosols, particulate matter, and acid rain.”
[26]https://qz.com/1166010/air-pollution-even-at-levels-that-meet-national-standards-causes-premature-death/ “We found that the mortality rate increases almost linearly as air pollution increases,” Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at Harvard’s school of public health, and a senior author on the paper, said in a statement. Though the study focuses on the US, its basic conclusion applies broadly: the “safe” levels laid out by national health agencies everywhere are inherently far from safe. “Any level of air pollution, no matter how low, is harmful to human health,” Dominici said.
[27]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/clean-air-act-saved-millions-of-lives-trillions-of-dollars
[28] https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities
[29] http://www.chec.pitt.edu/documents/PRETA/CHEC%20PRETA%20HAPs%20Report.pdf p. 13 Lifetime cancer risk from HAPs in Clairton is 1155 per million vs 28-98 per million for some nearby areas
[30] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/clairtoncitypennsylvania/PST045219 https://padep-1.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f31a188de122467691cae93c3339469c
[31] https://www.ehn.org/us-steel-pittsburgh-cancer-2634765539.html
[32] http://rocis.org/rocis-low-cost-monitoring-project At least 375 participants, currently opening up 47th cohort
[33] http://rocis.org/clairton-air-filter-project
[34] The sensors we’re using show real-time, raw particle counts -- the number on the screen ends up being about how many particles a 12-year-old would inhale in a single breath. That’s what the 3000 is about. But I want to know how this tracks with the AQI, the Air Quality Index Stella & I ask about every day. So after I go inside, I look at the data from a couple other sensors in my neighborhood and I find out the PM 2.5. level right now is over 50 micrograms per cubic meter. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA limits average annual particle pollution to 12. When PM 2.5 is up to 50, it’s color-coded orange on the AQI chart -- higher than green for “Good,” higher than yellow for “Moderate.” Orange is the range
[35]https://www.ehn.org/dirty-air-wreaks-its-harm-even-before-birth-2634874470/the-findings-grow-more-troubling Subhead: “From percentages to people”
[36]https://journals.lww.com/epidem/Fulltext/2020/01000/In_Pursuit_of_Evidence_in_Air_Pollution.1.aspx “Over the past decades, evidence of adverse population health effects has accumulated from many thousands of epidemiologic studies, suggesting this is a critically important public health problem. While at the individual level the relative effects of exposure tend to be small, and potentially large confounding biases are difficult to rule out, air pollution is ubiquitous and the exposed population is enormous.”
[37]https://www.alleghenycounty.us/uploadedFiles/Allegheny_Home/Health_Department/Programs/Air_Quality/011420-USSteel-Clairton-Enforcement-Ltr.pdf -
[38] http://toxicten.org/us-steel-clairton “From 2012 until 2015, 6,700 air permit violations were reported for this plant, an average of more than four violations per day.”
[39]https://www.alleghenycounty.us/uploadedFiles/Allegheny_Home/Health_Department/Article-21-Air-Pollution-Control-rev3319(1).pdf
[40] Interview with Matt Mehalik, director of the nonprofit Project Breathe, 3/31/21.
[41] Interview with Matt Mehalik, director of the nonprofit Project Breathe, 3/31/21.
[42]https://pennenvironment.org/sites/environment/files/reports/PA_cuttingsmoke_final_scrn%20revd.pdf p. 18-23