The rooftops of some homes in Claymont will soon become temporary science labs because of a community air pollution monitoring project starting this weekend.
Residents plan to set up two portable air monitors to collect dust falling on their homes from Claymont Steel, a steel mill on the Philadelphia Pike, and test samples for potential health hazards.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) identified Claymont Steel as a source of the dust in 2005 and ordered the company to clean up its act and set up four pollution monitors.
Residents became fed up with the slow pace of Claymont Steel's dust reduction improvements and wary of the pollution monitors they feel will not reflect dust levels in their neighborhoods, said Claymont resident Dee Whildin.
Whildin said she has been scraping shiny, metallic dust off her car and home for five years and became so frustrated with the nightly dust storms that she organized a group of residents to collect the dust.
They enlisted the help of Global Community Monitor, an environmental advocacy group in San Francisco, Calif., which supplied the air monitors and is teaching residents to use them.
Residents will be using electronic monitors that imitate human lungs by drawing air through a filter at a steady rate, said Denny Larson, executive director of Global Community Monitor.
The filter will collect the same particles residents are breathing, Larson said, which will be analyzed to see the chemicals present and the size of the dust particles. The biggest concern is the smallest particles because they can become trapped in the lungs and cause serious health hazards, he said.
“It’s just like smoking. These particles can permanently damage your lungs,” Larson said. “If they are also toxic heavy metals, you get an extra and more serious health effect.”
Toxic metals, such as mercury and lead, can accumulate in a person’s body and cause neurological problems and cancer, he said.
The monitors will also help residents pinpoint the exact location of the steel dust, Larson said. Many residents have blamed Claymont Steel as the culprit, but the monitors will show exactly what part of the steel mill dust is coming from, he said.
Each monitor can be moved every day, depending on the direction the wind is blowing, to catch dust coming from the steel mill, Larson said, unlike the steel mill's stationary pollution monitors, which will collect dust from a number of different sources.
