Middletown’s Cleveland-Cliffs Steel Mill is planning to switch to a greener coal production process.
The Middletown plant will get up to $575 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to retire its old blast furnace and install two electric furnaces.
Advocacy group Industrious Labs recently released a report, detailing the health impacts of steel mills across the nation including in Ohio.
The report focused on the health effects of steel production.
Hilary Lewis, steel director at Industrious Labs, said Cleveland-Cliffs action is an encouraging move in Ohio’s steel production.
WYSO’s Shay Frank sat down with Lewis to talk about the steel mills in Ohio.
Shay Frank: Can you explain what Industrious Labs is or what you do there?
Hilary Lewis: We are an advocacy organization focused on climate, health, jobs and justice in the heavy industry sector.
Frank: How is steel made with a blast furnace and why might this process be unhealthy?
Today, globally, most steel is made in blast furnaces that combine iron ore and coke, which is a product made from coal, in a high temperature furnace to make iron or pig iron. And that accounts for about 70% of global steel production.”
Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works Steel Plant emitted 15,278 tons of carbon monoxide in 2020. That ranks it 3rd highest among Ohio's major emitters.Industrious Labs
Today, we're focusing on blast furnaces, which still account for about 30% of steel production in the United States, because that's actually where 73% of climate pollution comes from.
Frank: We did a story about the health impacts for specific people in Middletown. But can you kind of give a little recap of what some of those health impacts may be from the communities that surround these steel mills that still use the coal process?
Lewis: It's a lot of health conditions related to breathing and respiratory diseases. So things like asthma, but also heart conditions and all these things can add up to premature death. And that was one of the main findings of our report, that we're looking not only at increased hospitalization rates, increased illness and things like coughing or other asthma symptoms, but this is also something that's impacting people's lifespan.
Frank: Knowing that this kind of pollution and this kind of impact happens from these kind of steel mills, is there any sort of regulation by the EPA over this?
Lewis: That's the first finding of this report, is that while there are regulations that exist, they are not stringent enough to protect human health and that the penalties for violating those regulations are not high enough to dissuade companies from violating. And so more restrictions are needed to protect public health and greater penalties.
And to put that in context of what we're seeing nationally, the report found that all of the facilities that we looked at, so that was 17 different facilities in a number of different states, Ohio was just one of them, added up to 892 premature deaths annually, and almost 250,000 cases of asthma symptoms annually from this pollution, estimated from this pollution using our modeling. So Ohio is obviously a significant piece of that, but the bigger pie is bigger.
Frank: So taking a smaller slice of that pie and looking at Middletown with this change that's occurring, what are your hopes for this transition?
Lewis: Cleveland-Cliffs still has work to do to ensure that they can secure a supply of green hydrogen, and in the interim, they've said that they will use methane gas, which will not get them the type of health or climate benefits that this project could realize with cleaner alternatives.
We don't have actual numbers to look at in terms of the health impacts, but we know that removing coal from the equation will dramatically reduce the health harming pollutants. And so we'll see hugely improved health outcomes, significantly lower expenses associated with health care costs, we'll also see an increased number of jobs.
Frank: Is there anything that you think should be done to also remedy the health impacts that have already taken place for those people in those communities?
Lewis: One of the things that these companies can be doing is investing in communities. And one of the great things about the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations grants that are happening in Middletown is that they are required to have a community benefit agreement that says how the company is going to invest in the community. And it could be in really any way that the community is interested.
One of the things that we've heard from communities in other places is that investing in, you know, local health systems is something that folks are interested in. And that's something that the Middletown community could be asking for.
