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From her front porch, Collette Williams can see the lights of U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, between the houses across the street. She can pick out the different colors of smoke and steam emanating from “the mill.”

“That’s like a white smoke,” she says on an overcast afternoon. “And then over there, like a dark smoke.”

Western Pennsylvania’s steel industry may be a shell of what once was. But the Clairton works, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, remains North America’s largest producer of coke, a key component in making steel. Coke is basically pure carbon, made from baking coal at high temperatures, a process that can create a lot of pollution.

On this day the fumes aren’t too bad, owing to rain that has just come through. But on some days the rotten egg odor of sulfur is inescapable, a rich, earthy smell that sticks to the back of the throat. What’s in the air is worse, especially for her son, SaVaughn, 13.

The sixth-grader has persistent asthma. He takes four medications daily, a regimen of inhalers, nebulizers and pills to calm the inflammation that can make it hard for him to catch his breath.

Williams won’t let him play football because if he plays in bad weather, he could catch a cold and have breathing problems for weeks. Instead of walking a few blocks to school in the winter, he gets a bus, to avoid the risk of getting sick. But there’s one trigger that’s hard to avoid: according to the EPA, the air here is some of the dirtiest in the country.

“The pollution in here in Clairton is horrible,” she says. “When the smoke comes up, smoke rises so it comes immediately up here.”

About three years ago SaVaughn’s asthma started flaring up, leading to ER visits, more doctors, and more medication. Around this same time, regulators say, the plant’s air pollution got worse.

It’s impossible to say whether SaVaughn’s problems were linked to the coke works. But one research team has found asthma rates for kids in Clairton are double the countywide rate.

One Town’s Decades Long Struggle For Cleaner Air

Photos: Reid R. Frazier/Allegheny Front