CLAIRTON, Pa. (PAI)—The Aug. 9 explosion at U.S. Steel’s Clairton, Pa., Coke Works plant, which killed two workers and injured 10 others, “should not have happened and could have been prevented,” says a member of an independent board investigating chemical accidents.
“This is a very serious incident that fatally injured two people and put others at serious risk,” added Sylvia Johnson, a member of the independent federal Chemical Safety Board.
After a thorough investigation by its small staff, the board reports on the causes of fatal chemical accidents and recommends improvements. It’s always angered the companies it probes because—unlike them—it usually finds human error was not involved but company malfeasance was.
Clairton is the largest coke plant in North America. Plants like Clairton, 15 miles south of Pittsburgh, convert coal into coke at temperatures of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The coke powers blast furnacesreally multiple batteries of coke ovens—which turn iron ore into molten steel. Batteries 13 and 14 exploded.
Coke plants also emit dangerous byproducts, including coke oven gas, which the National Public Radio stations in the Pittsburgh area noted is very flammable.
NPR research also revealed a long record of accidents over the last 16 years at Clairton, including one in 2009 that killed a worker, another the next year which injured 20 more workers, and yet another explosion in February 2025 which sent two workers to the hospital.
Clairton’s pollution has exceeded federal environmental standards for the past three years, and the former deputy environmental director for Allegheny County calls Clairton “decrepit” and the worst plant he’s ever seen in his 30-year career.
Its anti-pollution equipment failed for three months in 2018. Sulfur pollution rose 4,500% and asthma cases in the surrounding area rose with it. That prompted a $2.25 million county fine, distributed to 11 local anti-pollution groups over five years starting last year, the Pittsburgh Union Progress—the News Guild’s strike paper—has reported.
Including that penalty, Allegheny County has fined U.S. Steel a total of $56 million for air quality violations at Clairton over the last three years. That’s on top of $5 million in fines from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The Clairton coke plant is the biggest single source of pollution in the county.
So the federal board and the Steelworkers, who sent their own safety and health investigatory team to Clairton after the blast, will have a very sorry record to deal with there. Even with Johnson’s initial analysis, the federal board will spend months on the specific investigation.
“The USW has occupational health and safety experts and other representatives on the ground at the Clairton Works assessing the situation and aiding our members,” Steelworkers District 10 Director Bernie Hall said in a statement.
“While we are still determining the scope of the tragedy, we are aware that multiple workers are receiving medical treatment for their injuries. In the coming days, we will work with the appropriate authorities to ensure a thorough investigation and to see that our members get the support they need,” added Hall.
But USW and the federal board face another hurdle besides sifting through the evidence following this fatal explosion: The GOP Trump regime. By law, the Environmental Protection Agency is charged with monitoring such air pollution hazards and taking action where needed.
As part of Trump’s massive deregulation push, at the behest both the president and industry lobbyists who have the ear of Trump’s EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, the EPA trashed rules that would be useful for preventing future Clairtons, other news reports said.
Dr. Jim Fabisiak, a New Jersey environmental professor who single-handedly determined which rail cars in nearby East Palestine, Ohio, emitted which toxic substances after the February 2023 derailment and crash there, discussed the problems that plague Clairton. With WPXI-TV.
Fabisiak said the 2018 anti-pollution equipment failure should have been a wake-up call about severe problems at the coke plant. He urges residents to be cautious.
“Any time you have a situation where you’re weighing productivity and profits, which is the result of deregulation, then health and safety is the other side of that scale,” Fabisiak told WPXI.
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