Study: After Shenango PA Coke Plant Closed, Pediatric Asthma ER Visits Fell 20% Immediately 40% Long-Term

In 2015, when Karen Grzywinski heard that the Shenango Coke Works near Pittsburgh was closing after 54 years in operation, she didn’t believe it. Neither did her neighbors, some of whom had joined her in fighting a long battle for the plant to better control its pollution. “A number of us thought it was a joke,” she said. “We were really, really surprised.” Shenango, which produced coke, a concentrated form of coal used to manufacture steel, was then a major source of air pollution in the region. After years of suffering from respiratory symptoms triggered by bad air days, Grzywinski said she noticed a change soon after the closure. “You could look across the river and not see this perpetual haze,” she said. “It was astounding, the difference.”

Since Shenango closed in 2016, researchers at New York University, the University of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Health Department have tracked respiratory and cardiovascular emergency room visits and hospitalizations before and after the shutdown, each time finding dramatic evidence of improvement. Two weeks ago, the authors of one of those studies published an analysis focused only on respiratory health. Comparing the three years before and three years after the closure in the nearby community of Avalon, they found an immediate 20 percent decrease in weekly ER visits for respiratory problems and a 40 percent decrease in visits for pediatric asthma. Pediatric asthma visits continued to decline over the long-term, as did hospitalizations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

While researchers expected a decrease, they were not anticipating the size of the reduction, said Wuyue Yu, a postdoctoral fellow in NYU’s Department of Population Health who co-authored the study. The significant drop could be due to the nature of the pollution created by the coke-making process, which releases a dangerous cocktail of chemicals and compounds like benzene, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter.

“This pollution mix is far more toxic than everyday pollution,” said George Thurston, the other co-author and a professor in NYU’s School of Medicine, where he directs the program in exposure assessment and human health effects. “It’s like coal-fired power plant particles, but on steroids.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05082025/pittsburgh-asthma-cases-drop-after-coal-plant-closure/