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Pittsburgh, in its founding, was blessed and cursed with two abundant natural resources: free-flowing rivers and a nearby coal seam. Their presence made the city鈥檚 20th-century status as a coal-fired, steelmaking powerhouse possible. It also threw so much toxic smoke in the air that the town was once described as 鈥�.鈥�

Though air quality laws strengthened over the decades, pollution in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County has remained high, ranking among the 25 worst metro areas in the United States for fine, easy-to-inhale particles known as PM2.5. Carbon pollution can often feel so big鈥攂orne on the air, causing ice caps to go black and melt. But it also causes problems much closer to home. Allegheny County鈥檚 inhabitants are in the nation for cancer risk, and the area is for its high rates of asthma and heart issues, both of which, like the biggest emitters, are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. These kinds of health problems can often seem both mysterious in origin and inescapable for the people who live with them. However, the January 2016 closure of the Shenango Coke Works coal-processing plant provided an astonishing example of how quickly those same communities can recover from the most dire impacts of pollution.

Shenango was a coke oven鈥攁 facility that heats coal to around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce coke, which is in turn used to make steel. Such operations are famously nasty particle polluters, emitting not only carbon dioxide but also contaminants like benzene, arsenic, lead, and mercury. 

The , led by the New York University Langone School of Medicine, used medical records from area hospitals to determine emergency room visits and hospitalizations for heart ailments in the three years preceding and following the closure of the plant. They found an astonishing 42% drop in weekly emergency cardiovascular admissions after 2016. That immediate drop was followed by a downward trend that continued for three years. The study also found corresponding steep drops in sulfur dioxide鈥攁s high as 90% near the facility and 50% at a monitoring station six miles away. Arsenic levels plummeted by two-thirds.

Study co-author George Thurston compares the sudden improvement to the benefits of quitting smoking. 鈥淥ver time the body recovers,鈥� he says. 鈥淚nstead of at an individual level, you鈥檙e really looking at a community healing after the removal of that exposure.鈥�

To Thurston, and study lead author Wuyue Yu, this research shows that cutting carbon emissions offers more than an abstract, long-term, far-ranging result. It can actually save lives, almost immediately.

The study was prompted by years of local agitation about the plant. Shenango closed under intense community scrutiny and had paid the county millions of dollars in fines for multiple air quality violations. 

For years, an organization called Allegheny County Clean Air Now, or ACCAN, fought to rein in ongoing emissions at the plant, bringing in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Allegheny County health department, and Carnegie Mellon University to monitor the plant鈥檚 pattern of violations and the health consequences for its neighbors. ACCAN members served as community scientists, collecting data and taking the results to local officials, company shareholder meetings, and U.S. Steel. Even steelworkers from the plant occasionally attended meetings, expressing concern about the situation. Now, says ACCAN member Thaddeus Popovich (who was told that there鈥檚 a 40% to 50% likelihood that his own triple-bypass heart surgery was prompted by living half a mile from Shenango), he and his peers feel 鈥渧indicated.鈥�

After the plant鈥檚 closure, members of ACCAN gathered and set to paper their memories of life before Shenango shut down. In the resulting collection, called , people describe living with fiery and sulfurous smells and mysterious ailments. Angelo Taranto, an active ACCAN member, lost his wife to a host of respiratory problems he鈥檚 sure were caused by Shenango鈥檚 billowing smoke. 鈥淭hese personal situations really energize people to want to do something,鈥� he says. 

After the closure, Taranto says, ACCAN encouraged the Allegheny County health department to pull together some retrospective health studies. In 2018, Dr. Deborah Gentile documented a 41.6% drop in uncontrolled pediatric asthma two years following Shenango鈥檚 shuttering.

鈥淲hat we were hearing from county officials was that they didn鈥檛 think the closure would be a boon to county health,鈥� Taranto says. 鈥淲e heard similar things from the company itself and we knew that wasn鈥檛 true, and we knew that we couldn鈥檛 let those types of statements remain unchallenged.鈥�

There鈥檚 still a long way to go for the greater Pittsburgh area, though. Matt Mehalik, the director of the Breathe Project鈥攚hich used its resources to support ACCAN and connect them to researchers鈥攑oints to similar facilities, such as the Clairton coke oven and the Mon Valley steel works, as contributors to major public health problems. Clairton, 10 times as large as Shenango ever was, sits near a low-income, majority-Black neighborhood, and community organizations have worked for years to hold the facility accountable to the harm it has caused. Environmental advocates are currently urging the EPA to Clairton鈥檚 permit. The EPA has also proposed a for toxic coke-oven emissions, which could increase pressure on plants like Clairton.

Mehalik is excited about a potential transition to forms of steelmaking as a long-term solution for Allegheny County. 鈥淲e know that an investment in the right type of green steelmaking is needed if there is a future of steelmaking in the Mon Valley,鈥� he says. 鈥淧erpetuation of a polluting facility that comes at the expense of our county is highly problematic.鈥�

This in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. .