Cement is all around us. It’s used in everything from concrete and mortar to stucco and grout. But making cement is dirty business. A number of pollutants are emitted from cement plants – from both the production process and the fuels used to stoke kilns.
The road to regulating cement manufacturing air pollution has been bumpy and long. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized amendments to a set of pollution-reducing rules proposed in 2010. In the agency’s own words, the new rules, “maintain dramatic reductions of mercury, acid gases, particulate matter, and total hydrocarbons from existing cement kilns across the country, while ensuring that emissions from new kilns remain low.”
There is some criticism that the amended rules – which resulted from petitions filed by the cement industry – make too many concessions, including weakening particulate matter standards and abandoning continuous emissions monitoring. They also give industry until 2015 to comply, with the ability to request an extra year. The original rules were due to go into effect this year.
While there are only around 100 cement plants in the U.S., they are one of the biggest sources of man-made mercury emissions, spewing out some 16,000 pounds annually. Mercury exposure has been linked to neurological damage in children and it contaminates the food chain when it enters waterways. The new rules will reduce mercury emissions by 90% when fully adopted.
But for those living in the shadow of cement plants, the amendments means several more years of dirty emissions. And fears that there will be another implementation delay.
Web Links
Washington Post
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-21/national/36017835_1_james-pew-cement-plants-boilers
EPA
http://www.epa.gov/airquality/cement/basic.html
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/science/earth/epa-issues-standards-on-boiler-air-pollution.html
Photo, taken on March 21, 2006, courtesy of Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, with partial support from the Field Day Foundation.