Cementing a Pollution-free Future

This week Illinois and eight other states filed suit against the Bush administration for its alleged failure to regulate mercury and other pollutants from cement plants. Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that is particularly harmful to young children and pregnant mothers. Mercury pollution has poisoned every lake, river, and stream in Illinois to the point that there is a statewide advisory against eating fish.

State officials from Illinois, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania contend the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's rule regarding Portland cement plants violates the federal Clean Air Act. The lawsuits are good news for southern Illinoisans since they can expect to live downwind from the Holcim cement plant being constructed just across the river in St. Genevieve, Missouri.

Unless the law changes, St. Louis and Illinois will experience increased mercury contamination, as well as, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and high particulate matter. These are all contributors to asthma. The American Lung Association has given St. Louis-area counties failing grades for high ground ozone levels, and the EPA has declared eight St. Louis area counties to be in non-attainment under more stringent 8-hour ozone standards. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America ranks St. Louis third worst in the nation for asthma.

The EPA estimates the nation's 118 cement plants already discharge a combined 12,000 pounds of mercury a year, although some state regulators say the actual amount is actually higher. The sources of cement plant mercury are the raw materials used to make cement -- limestone, clay, sand and iron ore -- and coal which burns in the kilns at very high temperatures. Cement manufacturing contributes about 5% of global man-made CO2 emissions.

The plant will be the second largest cement manufacturing plant in the US producing approximately 4,000,000 metric tons per year. It is nearly double the size of the largest cement plant in the United States. The plant’s construction began in March of 2006 and is due to be completed in 2009. Carbondale is only 60 miles east of this pollution source. St. Louis is only 45 miles north.