…Breathe… Oh Wait, You Can’t

For so long Pittsburgh has been trying to recover from the damage its industrious steel age has impacted on it. And the “city that built America” has come a long way. We’ve gone from Carnegie and Frick to UPMC and Google. But still, this is no time to relax. 

The American Lung Association’s annual air quality report for 2019 ranked Pittsburgh 10th in the nation for worst air quality.. The same association found that Allegheny County was the only U.S. county outside of California that received all F’s in the national air quality report card. And as proud, GPA-obsessed, sleep-deprived students of North Allegheny, we definitely can’t have that.

So we agree right? Pittsburgh is not in the clear. This city’s citizens are still breathing in unhealthy air and our lungs are still subject to higher rates of asthma and lung cancer. Then why are we allowing a multi-billion-dollar petrochemical complex to be built just an hour’s drive away from here?

Essentially, the purpose of this plant is to create little plastic pellets (called nurdles) that can be used as building blocks for other plastic products. When finished, the plant is projected to produce over a million tons of plastic per year, even as much of the world agrees our environment could do with less of it.

But this isn’t the main issue. Environmentalists are terrified of the damage this plant will have on Pittsburgh’s atmosphere. 

In 2017, the city of Pittsburgh revealed a plan to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Which would mean a reduction of 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Shell’s plant is scheduled to finish this year, and once fully constructed it will release 2.2 million tons of greenhouse gases. Annually. This means that all efforts to reduce air pollution through 2030 will be negated by a single plant. 

Of those emissions, 522 tons will be volatile organic compounds or VOCs. VOCs are the gases produced by certain solids and liquids and can have destructive effects on the human body. Exposure can cause eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches, loss of coordination, nausea, and damage to the kidneys, livers, and central nervous system.

In Louisiana, the length of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge has been coined “cancer alley”, but not without good reason. The 85-mile strip has been marked up by over 100 petrochemical plants and refineries, and the effects can clearly be seen in the lives of the citizens. Communities at the heart of cancer alley have risks for cancer that are 50 times the national average. In one small town by the name of Reserve, nearly every household has a family member who has died from or battled cancer.