Tell the EPA to strengthen steel mill regulations

Integrated iron and steel mills (referred to as “steel mills”) are industrial plants that process iron ore in huge blast furnaces to make steel. These steel mills release huge quantities of arsenic, chromium, lead, and other hazardous air pollutants into the air that nearby communities breathe. In fact, these mills are the worst source of lead emissions in the United States — a potent neurotoxin with no safe level of exposure.

Everyone is impacted by the production of steel but especially people living near these facilities and those who work in the steel mills. Exposure to these types of polluting emissions increases the risk of cardiovascular mortality and lung disease.

The EPA proposed weak amendments to its existing decades-old rule to reduce toxic air emissions from steel mills. This proposal fails to protect people living near the facilities because, by EPA’s own account, it requires no reductions at all in some of the most toxic pollution that steel mills emit. In addition, it allows steel mills to continue emitting hundreds of tons of toxic metals, including arsenic, chromium, and lead.

Steel mills also emit large quantities of toxic organic chemicals, including dioxins, as well as acid gases, including hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, and chlorine gas. Short term exposure to high levels of dioxin can cause skin lesions and alter liver function. Long term exposure to even tiny amounts dioxins is linked to impairment of the immune system, the developing nervous system, the hormone system, and reproductive functions. EPA has identified dioxin as a probable human carcinogen. The proposed rule, however, does nothing to reduce these emissions.

These amendments, as they stand, would reduce just 15% of the toxic emissions and does not come close to providing adequate protection for people living near steel mills. Tell the EPA to strengthen this rule today.