Air quality monitoring continues in the Mon Valley

CLAIRTON, Pa. — A Mobile Air Unit provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Carnegie Mellon University made several stops in the Mon Valley Thursday and Friday, monitoring the air quality following Monday’s deadly incident at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works plant

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An in-depth analysis of air quality is well underway.

“The main thing that we look for here are volatile organic compounds, so benzene would be one of them, said Matt Kundrat of the DEP.

“We have seen normal air concentrations in relation to what we typically measure for in this area, perhaps even less so,” said David Good of the Allegheny County Health Department.

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The DEP brought its Mobile Air Unit from Harrisburg on Thursday, first setting up closer to the plant, then collecting more data before moving across the river.

“We can measure the quality of the air everywhere between this and our mirror, which is about 50 yards away down there,” Kundrat said.

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The air monitor generates a beam of infrared light, shoots it down to that mirror, which causes it to bounce back. A detector analyzes how much light has come back, and the frequencies help to identify which molecules are present.

“I think this could be a new paradigm shift going forward, where we’re able to utilize more resources, more mobile monitoring efforts,” Good said. “It could help us understand some less-understood areas in Allegheny County in particular."

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The DEP plans to send this data back to Harrisburg for further analysis.

“We compare data with what they’ve already collected from earlier things, and we talk about what’s going to go into the report and what we’re going to do about it,” Kundrat said.

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