🏭Installing Air Monitors to Protect Residents’ Health in OH🫁
The lifecycle of plastics—and its negative impacts on human and environmental health—begin with the extraction of fossil fuels. Increasingly, this polluting journey starts with hydraulic fracturing (often called ‘hydro-fracking’ or just ‘fracking’) for natural gas. Fracking releases methane, a highly potent climate pollutant that’s responsible for more than 25 percent of the global warming we are experiencing today. It also releases toxic air pollution and creates harmful wastewater contamination while depleting water and other natural resources.
After extraction, ethane, a byproduct of fracking, is shipped to an ethane cracker facility where it is heated to very high temperatures that “crack” the molecule into a related chemical called ethylene. These massive ethane cracker facilities require huge amounts of energy to operate and release more greenhouse gases and air pollution including the following:
Hazardous air pollutants (HAPs): benzene, formaldehyde, and toluene
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
Particulate matter
Nitrogen oxide
Carbon dioxide
The ethylene is then processed with chemical additives to make little plastic pellets called ‘nurdles.’ These nurdles are then shipped all around the world and are used to create tons of different plastic products. Nurdles have an unfortunate tendency to spill during transport, polluting waterways and soil along the way to their next destination.
Plastic nurdles littered on a beach following a spill.
Old hydraulic fracturing (aka ‘fracking’) wells, steel production facilities, and natural gas-powered plants make air quality a serious concern for people living in the Youngstown, Ohio area. Toxic air emissions including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) threaten human health, especially of industry workers and residents in the immediate vicinity. The looming threat of a new waste tire and plastic-to-fuel facility, also known as “chemical recycling,” has prompted robust oppositional action in the community.
Jess Conard of Beyond Plastics and Chris "PK" DiGiulio of PSR-PA
In early September 2024, our Appalachia Director, Jess Conard, and our Youngstown, Ohio affiliate, SOBE Concerned Citizens worked together on an important initiative to install air monitors throughout the community. The company PurpleAir makes sensors that empower local environmental leaders who can now collect local air quality data and share it with the public as a tool to show cumulative community impacts and push for positive and healthy investments, not more polluting industry.
Collecting air quality measures prior to new industry (including “chemical recycling”) coming into the area can be a critical tool to protect public health and safety as the data provides a critical baseline against which future air quality can be measured.
Jess partnered with Chris “PK” DiGiulio, an environmental chemist at Physicians for Social Responsibility-Pennsylvania (PSR-PA) to meet the community's need to strategically place six air monitors in the area near the site, some outside the focus area, away from polluting facilities and in different topographical spaces.
Chris “PK” DiGiulio of Physicians for Social Responsibility - Pennsylvania installing the PurpleAir monitors in Youngstown, OH.
Not only did PSR-PA generously offer the air monitor resources for the community, Chris also collected important imaging data using a FLIR-OGI to capture a visual of fugitive emissions from local polluters. This data is available to the public and will be reviewed by PSR-PA to look for PM2 spikes, compare real time data between monitors and identify cumulative impacts over time. While the air monitors are not a health solution, they can be an important tool in gathering data to prevent additional polluting facilities from coming into community spaces.
Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community Board Member Dr. Clifford Lau (left) and Chris "PK" DiGiulio of PSR-PA (right) using a FLIR-OGI to capture a visual of fugitive emissions from Shell's massive ethane cracker facility.
Beyond Plastics would like to extend a sincere Thank you to PSR-PA for this collaborative effort to work alongside SOBE Concerned Citizens to meet a community need and protect the people of the important Youngstown, Ohio municipality.