The
rooftops of some homes in Claymont will soon become temporary science
labs because of a community air pollution monitoring project starting
this weekend.
Residents plan to set up two portable air monitors to collect dust
falling on their homes from Claymont Steel, a steel mill on the
Philadelphia Pike, and test samples for potential health hazards.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) identified Claymont Steel as a source of the dust in 2005 and ordered the company to clean up its act and set up four pollution monitors.
Residents became fed up with the slow pace of Claymont Steel's dust reduction improvements and wary of the pollution monitors they feel will not reflect dust levels in their neighborhoods, said Claymont resident Dee Whildin.
Whildin said she has been scraping shiny, metallic dust off her car
and home for five years and became so frustrated with the nightly dust
storms that she organized a group of residents to collect the dust.
They enlisted the help of Global Community Monitor, an environmental
advocacy group in San Francisco, Calif., which supplied the air
monitors and is teaching residents to use them.
Residents will be using electronic monitors that imitate human lungs by
drawing air through a filter at a steady rate, said Denny Larson,
executive director of Global Community Monitor.
The filter will collect the same particles residents are breathing,
Larson said, which will be analyzed to see the chemicals present and
the size of the dust particles. The biggest concern is the smallest
particles because they can become trapped in the lungs and cause
serious health hazards, he said.
“It’s just like smoking. These particles can permanently damage your
lungs,” Larson said. “If they are also toxic heavy metals, you get an
extra and more serious health effect.”
Toxic metals, such as mercury and lead, can accumulate in a person’s body and cause neurological problems and cancer, he said.
The monitors will also help residents pinpoint the exact location of
the steel dust, Larson said. Many residents have blamed Claymont Steel
as the culprit, but the monitors will show exactly what part of the
steel mill dust is coming from, he said.
Each monitor can be moved every day, depending on the direction the
wind is blowing, to catch dust coming from the steel mill, Larson said,
unlike the steel mill's stationary pollution monitors, which will
collect dust from a number of different sources.
He expects the first results from the monitors to return from the lab
in August, giving residents their first piece of data in the
eight-month monitoring project.
The data may not stop the pollution overnight, but it will give
residents scientific information to use in negotiations with Claymont
Steel, he said.
“When you get the community to be watch dogs, it greatly speeds up the company to clean up their act,” he said.
Their results will be reliable scientific data because the testing is
done at legitimate laboratories and the information gathered on health
hazards is from responsible sources, said James Brunswick, DNREC's
community ombudsman.
The residents' portable monitors will create results comparable to DNREC’s air quality monitors, he said. DNREC will use residents’ results when it measures the effectiveness of dust reduction projects at Claymont Steel, Brunswick said.
Claymont Steel has been making improvements at their mill to reduce steel dust since January, said Brad Klotz, a DNREC environmental engineer.
The company should begin installing a tree line along Naamans Road soon and is working on a plan to reduce dust from the mill's melt shop, Klotz said.
The steel mill's four air monitors are taking one sample every six days, but DNREC needs to finish analyzing the data before it can release the sample results, Klotz said.
Residents have waited a long time for something to be done about the
dust, Whildin said, and her patience is starting to wear thin.
Hopefully, the community monitoring project will lead to some changes,
she said.
“I’m excited that there is maybe a light at the end of the tunnel and Claymont Steel will stop the dust,” she said.
Claymont Steel environmental engineer Brian Houghton did not return calls from Community News.