EPA’s update to hazardous air pollutant regulations for older steel mills includes a first-ever requirement to keep tabs on levels of chromium, a toxic metal, though the rule is weaker in some respects than the initial proposal.
In the first significant changes to the regulations in more than two decades, the agency will require limits on mercury, hydrochloric acid and other previously unregulated air toxics from what are technically known as integrated iron and steel mills. The plants will also have to install fence-line monitoring for chromium, a portion of which causes cancer in humans, and work to keep airborne concentrations below regulatory “action levels.”
In concert with other initiatives under President Joe Biden’s administration, the updated regulations will “ensure that U.S. steelmaking is the cleanest and most competitive in the world,” EPA said in an accompanying summary.
But under pressure from industry and Democratic members of Congress, the agency backed off plans to sharply tighten a pollution yardstick known as an “opacity limit” for two parts of the mills’ operations. The agency defines opacity as “a measure of the amount of light that is blocked or absorbed by an air pollution plume.”
