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A new tool for communities near Shell’s plastics plant in Pennsylvania provides air quality insights

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Monday, March 3, 2025

PITTSBURGH — A local advocacy group has launched a new, real-time air monitoring website for communities impacted by air pollution from Shell’s massive petrochemical complex and other industrial sites in western Pennsylvania. The website, launched by the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC), and dubbed Eyes on Air, includes data from five new air monitors the group placed in communities throughout Beaver County, which is home to the petrochemical complex Shell Polymers Monaca. The Eyes on Air website also displays data from PurpleAir monitors put up by residents throughout Beaver County. The PurpleAir monitors continuously measure particulate matter pollution with the goal of providing real-time air quality information to residents throughout the county. The project was paid for through a $5 million community fund created from a $10 million settlement between the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Shell after the company violated its air pollution permit and exceeded air quality standards. A screenshot from the Eyes on Air website displays real-time air quality data from 6 new air monitoring sites for Beaver County (screenshot captured on 3/3/25) Via Eyes On Air “The public having access to this data is important — people could bring reports generated on [the Eyes on Air website] to their doctor’s offices to discuss any potential health impacts related to specific pollutants from industries in the region,” Ana Hoffman, director of the air quality program at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, which partners with community groups to develop citizen science initiatives, told EHN. (The CREATE Lab was not involved with the Eyes on Air project). Beaver County is also home to other industrial polluters, including chemical and electronics manufacturing, and steel processing plants. Beaver County received a “C” grade for particulate matter pollution on the American Lung Association’s 2024 “State of the Air” report, which grades counties throughout the U.S. on various measures of air pollution that can impact lung health. That report also found that 13,579 adults and 3,149 children with asthma live in Beaver County, along with 10,588 people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and 15,616 people with cardiovascular disease, all of whom face additional risk from exposure to air pollution. Shell’s western Pennsylvania complex turns ethane from fracked gas into polyethylene nurdles, which are used to make many consumer products, including single-use plastic packaging and bags. Emissions from the plant include particulate matter pollution, volatile organic compounds like benzene and toluene, and a long list of other hazardous air pollutants. Exposure to these types of emissions is linked to acute health problems like heart attacks, asthma exacerbation, and miscarriages. Longer-term problems include respiratory and heart disease, cancer, and brain, liver, and kidney issues. A screenshot from the Eyes on Air website displays community air monitoring data in Beaver County (screenshot captured on 3/3/25)Via Eyes On Air Eyes on Air aims to fill gaps left by existing air monitoring programs in the region, which include Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection air monitoring stations in Beaver Falls, Brighton Township, and Hookstown and fenceline monitoring at Shell’s industrial complex. Shell agreed to conduct fenceline air monitoring on its property for certain chemicals linked to health harms in 2017, as part of a lawsuit settlement with environmental advocacy groups. Data from these monitors is publicly available, but it isn’t provided in real time, according to Hoffman.“The number one goal when communities do this kind of data collection work is to provide as close to real-time as possible air quality information to the public,” Hoffman said. “This data offers insights into what you can do hour to hour to protect your health, like when it’s safest to go for a run or let your kids play outside, or when to turn on an air filter at home.” The new monitors are located in Beaver, Brighton Township, Center Township, Raccoon Township, and Rochester. In March, BCMAC plans to launch a mobile air monitor for targeted testing of hazardous pollutants like benzene and 1,3-butadiene, which are linked to cancer risk. Residents can sign up to host the monitor on their property for two weeks. BCMAC said the Eyes on Air project will continue to evolve in response to community feedback. “Through focus groups, surveys, and social media discussions, residents shared what they needed in an air quality resource, and we built this platform together,” Hilary Starcher-O'Toole, executive director of BCMAC, said in a statement. “As someone born and raised in Beaver County, it’s been rewarding to co-create a tool that truly reflects the concerns and hopes of my neighbors.”Editor’s note: The CREATE lab and EHN both receive funding from the Heinz Endowments.

The website, launched by the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC), and dubbed Eyes on Air, includes data from five new air monitors the group placed in communities throughout Beaver County, which is home to the petrochemical complex Shell Polymers Monaca.

The Eyes on Air website also displays data from PurpleAir monitors put up by residents throughout Beaver County. The PurpleAir monitors continuously measure particulate matter pollution with the goal of providing real-time air quality information to residents throughout the county.

The project was paid for through a $5 million community fund created from a $10 million settlement between the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Shell after the company violated its air pollution permit and exceeded air quality standards.

A screenshot from the Eyes on Air website displays real-time air quality data from 6 new air monitoring sites for Beaver County (screenshot captured on 3/3/25) Via Eyes On Air

“The public having access to this data is important — people could bring reports generated on [the Eyes on Air website] to their doctor’s offices to discuss any potential health impacts related to specific pollutants from industries in the region,” Ana Hoffman, director of the air quality program at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, which partners with community groups to develop citizen science initiatives, told EHN. (The CREATE Lab was not involved with the Eyes on Air project).

Beaver County is also home to other industrial polluters, including chemical and electronics manufacturing, and steel processing plants. Beaver County received a “C” grade for particulate matter pollution on the American Lung Association’s 2024 “State of the Air” report, which grades counties throughout the U.S. on various measures of air pollution that can impact lung health. That report also found that 13,579 adults and 3,149 children with asthma live in Beaver County, along with 10,588 people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and 15,616 people with cardiovascular disease, all of whom face additional risk from exposure to air pollution.

Shell’s western Pennsylvania complex turns ethane from fracked gas into polyethylene nurdles, which are used to make many consumer products, including single-use plastic packaging and bags. Emissions from the plant include particulate matter pollution, volatile organic compounds like benzene and toluene, and a long list of other hazardous air pollutants.

Exposure to these types of emissions is linked to acute health problems like heart attacks, asthma exacerbation, and miscarriages. Longer-term problems include respiratory and heart disease, cancer, and brain, liver, and kidney issues.

A screenshot from the Eyes on Air website displays community air monitoring data in Beaver County (screenshot captured on 3/3/25)Via Eyes On Air

Eyes on Air aims to fill gaps left by existing air monitoring programs in the region, which include Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection air monitoring stations in Beaver Falls, Brighton Township, and Hookstown and fenceline monitoring at Shell’s industrial complex. Shell agreed to conduct fenceline air monitoring on its property for certain chemicals linked to health harms in 2017, as part of a lawsuit settlement with environmental advocacy groups. Data from these monitors is publicly available, but it isn’t provided in real time, according to Hoffman.

“The number one goal when communities do this kind of data collection work is to provide as close to real-time as possible air quality information to the public,” Hoffman said. “This data offers insights into what you can do hour to hour to protect your health, like when it’s safest to go for a run or let your kids play outside, or when to turn on an air filter at home.”

The new monitors are located in Beaver, Brighton Township, Center Township, Raccoon Township, and Rochester. In March, BCMAC plans to launch a mobile air monitor for targeted testing of hazardous pollutants like benzene and 1,3-butadiene, which are linked to cancer risk. Residents can sign up to host the monitor on their property for two weeks. BCMAC said the Eyes on Air project will continue to evolve in response to community feedback.

“Through focus groups, surveys, and social media discussions, residents shared what they needed in an air quality resource, and we built this platform together,” Hilary Starcher-O'Toole, executive director of BCMAC, said in a statement. “As someone born and raised in Beaver County, it’s been rewarding to co-create a tool that truly reflects the concerns and hopes of my neighbors.”

Editor’s note: The CREATE lab and EHN both receive funding from the Heinz Endowments.

Read the full story here.

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MONDAY, Sept. 15, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Every time you reach for a nonstick pan, you could be using chemicals that are now on the chopping block in the state of California.Lawmakers have approved a bill to phase out PFAS — also called “forever chemicals” — in cookware, cleaning products, dental floss, ski wax, food packaging and certain children’s items.The proposal, Senate Bill 682, passed in a 41-19 vote and quickly cleared the state Senate. It now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has until Oct. 12 to sign it into law, CBS News reported.PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been widely used for decades, because they resist heat and water stains. But the chemicals build up in the body and environment and have been linked to cancers, liver and kidney damage and reproductive problems."Exposure to PFAS poses a significant threat to the environment and public health," the bill says.If signed, the law will roll out in stages: cookware must comply by 2030; cleaning products by 2031; and all other covered items by 2028.The plan has drawn sharp debate. Some chefs, including Rachael Ray, Thomas Keller and David Chang, argue that banning nonstick cookware made with PTFE (a type of PFAS better known as Teflon) could make cooking harder and more expensive for families, CBS News reported. “PTFEs, when manufactured and used responsibly, are proven to be safe and effective,” Ray, who sells a line of cookware bearing her name, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.But environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, say nonstick pans can release PFAS particles when scratched or overheated. Actor Mark Ruffalo also urged support for the bill. "Independent science shows that the PFAS in cookware can wind up in our food," he wrote on X.State Sen. Ben Allen proposed the legislation.“PFAS pose a level of serious risks that require us to take a measured approach to reduce their proliferation and unnecessary use,” he said.California has already banned PFAS in items like carpets, firefighting foam and cosmetics. If signed into law, SB 682 would make California one of the first states to phase out PFAS in cookware.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has more on PFAS.SOURCES: CBS News, Sept. 13, 2025; California Legislative Information, Sept. 9, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material. The method could pave the way for new classes of electronic devices, such as ultrathin wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and highly sensitive and compact imaging devices. As a demonstration, the team fabricated a thin membrane of pyroelectric material — a class of heat-sensing material that produces an electric current in response to changes in temperature. 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The researchers are exploring ways to incorporate the film into lighter, higher-precision night-vision glasses.“This film considerably reduces weight and cost, making it lightweight, portable, and easier to integrate,” Xinyuan Zhang, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). “For example, it could be directly worn on glasses.”The heat-sensing film could also have applications in environmental and biological sensing, as well as imaging of astrophysical phenomena that emit far-infrared radiation.What’s more, the new lift-off technique is generalizable beyond pyroelectric materials. The researchers plan to apply the method to make other ultrathin, high-performance semiconducting films.Their results are reported today in a paper appearing in the journal Nature. The study’s MIT co-authors are first author Xinyuan Zhang, Sangho Lee, Min-Kyu Song, Haihui Lan, Jun Min Suh, Jung-El Ryu, Yanjie Shao, Xudong Zheng, Ne Myo Han, and Jeehwan Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering and of materials science and engineering, along with researchers at the University Wisconsin at Madison led by Professor Chang-Beom Eom and authors from multiple other institutions.Chemical peelKim’s group at MIT is finding new ways to make smaller, thinner, and more flexible electronics. They envision that such ultrathin computing “skins” can be incorporated into everything from smart contact lenses and wearable sensing fabrics to stretchy solar cells and bendable displays. To realize such devices, Kim and his colleagues have been experimenting with methods to grow, peel, and stack semiconducting elements, to fabricate ultrathin, multifunctional electronic thin-film membranes.One method that Kim has pioneered is “remote epitaxy” — a technique where semiconducting materials are grown on a single-crystalline substrate, with an ultrathin layer of graphene in between. The substrate’s crystal structure serves as a scaffold along which the new material can grow. The graphene acts as a nonstick layer, similar to Teflon, making it easy for researchers to peel off the new film and transfer it onto flexible and stacked electronic devices. After peeling off the new film, the underlying substrate can be reused to make additional thin films.Kim has applied remote epitaxy to fabricate thin films with various characteristics. In trying different combinations of semiconducting elements, the researchers happened to notice that a certain pyroelectric material, called PMN-PT, did not require an intermediate layer assist in order to separate from its substrate. Just by growing PMN-PT directly on a single-crystalline substrate, the researchers could then remove the grown film, with no rips or tears to its delicate lattice.“It worked surprisingly well,” Zhang says. “We found the peeled film is atomically smooth.”Lattice lift-offIn their new study, the MIT and UW Madison researchers took a closer look at the process and discovered that the key to the material’s easy-peel property was lead. As part of its chemical structure, the team, along with colleagues at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, discovered that the pyroelectric film contains an orderly arrangement of lead atoms that have a large “electron affinity,” meaning that lead attracts electrons and prevents the charge carriers from traveling and connecting to another materials such as an underlying substrate. The lead acts as tiny nonstick units, allowing the material as a whole to peel away, perfectly intact.The team ran with the realization and fabricated multiple ultrathin films of PMN-PT, each about 10 nanometers thin. They peeled off pyroelectric films and transfered them onto a small chip to form an array of 100 ultrathin heat-sensing pixels, each about 60 square microns (about .006 square centimeters). They exposed the films to ever-slighter changes in temperature and found the pixels were highly sensitive to small changes across the far-infrared spectrum.The sensitivity of the pyroelectric array is comparable to that of state-of-the-art night-vision devices. These devices are currently based on photodetector materials, in which a change in temperature induces the material’s electrons to jump in energy and briefly cross an energy “band gap,” before settling back into their ground state. This electron jump serves as an electrical signal of the temperature change. However, this signal can be affected by noise in the environment, and to prevent such effects, photodetectors have to also include cooling devices that bring the instruments down to liquid nitrogen temperatures.Current night-vision goggles and scopes are heavy and bulky. With the group’s new pyroelectric-based approach, NVDs could have the same sensitivity without the cooling weight.The researchers also found that the films were sensitive beyond the range of current night-vision devices and could respond to wavelengths across the entire infrared spectrum. This suggests that the films could be incorporated into small, lightweight, and portable devices for various applications that require different infrared regions. For instance, when integrated into autonomous vehicle platforms, the films could enable cars to “see” pedestrians and vehicles in complete darkness or in foggy and rainy conditions. The film could also be used in gas sensors for real-time and on-site environmental monitoring, helping detect pollutants. In electronics, they could monitor heat changes in semiconductor chips to catch early signs of malfunctioning elements.The team says the new lift-off method can be generalized to materials that may not themselves contain lead. In those cases, the researchers suspect that they can infuse Teflon-like lead atoms into the underlying substrate to induce a similar peel-off effect. For now, the team is actively working toward incorporating the pyroelectric films into a functional night-vision system.“We envision that our ultrathin films could be made into high-performance night-vision goggles, considering its broad-spectrum infrared sensitivity at room-temperature, which allows for a lightweight design without a cooling system,” Zhang says. “To turn this into a night-vision system, a functional device array should be integrated with readout circuitry. Furthermore, testing in varied environmental conditions is essential for practical applications.”This work was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

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Crisis

Bag It

Bag It examines our society’s use and abuse of plastic. The theme of the film focuses on plastic as it relates to our society’s throw away mentality, our culture of convenience, and our over consumption of throwaway products and packaging—things that we use one time and then, without another thought, we throw them away. Bag It offers a candid view of the disturbing realities of our culture. And, it suggests concrete solutions to our plastic addiction. The film will raise public awareness on the many issues related to plastic and inspire change, both on the individual level and on the public policy level.

Chemicals

Waste

Culture

Unacceptable Risk: Dr. Margaret Kripke on Cancer and the Environment

Unacceptable Risk tells the story of a prominent cancer researcher who rethinks her assumptions about the causes of cancer and the true burden of environmentally-induced cancers.

Chemicals

Science

Health

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Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

A new tool for communities near Shell’s plastics plant in Pennsylvania provides air quality insights

Related News

California Votes To Ban PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Cookware, Other Items

The Trump Team Wants to Boost Birth Rates While Poisoning Children

The greater Pittsburgh region is among the 25 worst metro areas in the country for air quality: Report

New, 'Living' Building Material Made From Fungi and Bacteria Could Pave the Way to Self-Healing Structures

New electronic “skin” could enable lightweight night-vision glasses

Suggested Viewing

Toxic Business

Sprayed

The Story of Plastic

Bag It

Unacceptable Risk: Dr. Margaret Kripke on Cancer and the Environment

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future