GASP Event | Sustainability Salon on Air Quality
Sun, Oct 13
|Zoom + In-Person


Time & Location
Oct 13, 2024, 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Zoom + In-Person
About the event
Join GASP, Inversion Documentary's Mark Dixon, and clean air advocate Zachary Barber for a discussion on air quality. Here's what organizer (and longtime GASP board member) Maren Cooke said in her invite:
Our region's industrial past earned Pittsburgh the monicker "Hell with the lid taken off." Our air is not nearly as bad as it was a century ago, but it's not quite clean, either. As autumn settles in, the 153rd Sustainability Salon will return to our annual fall focus on Air Quality. Weather permitting, we'll be in person (with a Zoom option).
One organization that has had a lot to do with the improvement in Pittsburgh's air is the Group Against Smog & Pollution, or GASP. Executive director Patrick Campbell will share the recent and ongoing doings of this 55-year-old organization. GASP serves many roles, including educating policymakers and the public, engaging communities in defending their right to breathe clean air, connecting youth and elders in creative projects, policy advocacy, legal action, permit reviews, a big new regional air monitoring project.
In his work with PennEnvironment, clean air advocate Zachary Barber helped bring a Clean Air Act citizens' suit against U.S. Steel for illegal pollution by Clairton Coke Works following the catastrophic Christmas Eve fire in 2018. That lawsuit wrapped up in January of this year and resulted in the largest penalty of its kind in PA's history, required tens of millions of dollars of pollution control upgrades, and established millions of dollars in clean air community funding. He will reflect on lessons learned from the legal process, some blockbuster discoveries about what led to the fire and how local health authorities dealt with the aftermath, and what this outcome means for residents of the Mon Valley.
Mark Dixon is a local photographer, filmmaker, and activist, mainly around climate and air quality. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his third film, "Inversion: The Unfinished Business of Pittsburgh's Air." Mark has been keeping a weather eye on air quality issues all around the region and will share many key insights and help frame our conversation.