PITTSBURGH -- If you live in, work in, or even visit Allegheny County, here's a word of caution: the air you breathe is hazardous to your health.

This year, one report after another has all warned us that there are elevated toxic levels in our air. Team 4 reporter Jim Parsons investigates what is being done about it.

Both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a recently published study by Carnegie Mellon University state the problem plainly: everyone in Allegheny County is inhaling the toxic chemical benzene at levels that raise the cancer risk, Parsons reported.

People who live in communities near heavy industry, like Avalon and Clairton, are breathing a toxic brew that could shorten their lives considerably.

What follows is a transcript of Parsons' report:

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It's the chemical plants on Neville Island. It's the giant Coke Works in Clairton. And it's all of US. The cars we drive. The diesel buses we ride. The trucks that deliver goods we buy. They all spew toxic chemicals into the air we breathe.

Tom Hoffman: "We're not talking about numbers, we're talking about people's lives."

Tom Hoffman and other public health activists want the Allegheny County Board of Health to take action. Instead, the Board has indefinitely postponed a vote on updating the guidelines for issuing air quality permits to industrial polluters. The old guidelines were written more than 20 years ago.

Tom Hoffman: "We had worked for a couple years on this in a sub-committee that included community, environment, business to come up with these proposals."

County executive Dan Onorato, who appoints Health Board members, doesn't deny he wanted the new air toxics guidelines tabled.

Dan Onorato: "Ideally, I'd like to see something done statewide so that the state is more consistent on all of our counties."

Like his argument about property reassessments, Onorato says it isn't fair that Allegheny County has to play by a different set of rules than other Pennsylvania counties, except for Philadelphia, in regulating industrial air polluters.

Dan Onorato: "And the air that people breathe in Washington and Westmoreland county is the same air that we breathe in Allegheny county."

Hoffman says that's not true and several studies, he says, prove it.

Tom Hoffman: "The CMU study was very clear that we have a huge amount of toxic emissions in this area. And the other thing they were clear about is that toxic emissions are a local problem. Let's look at this problem. Let's come together as a community and let's try to fix it. That's what we need."

And that's exactly the situation Louisville, Kentucky found itself in five years ago. Somehow, the politicians, the environmentalists and the captains of industry in that town figured out a way to solve it -- together.

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Read Part 2 Of The Report: Team 4 travels to Louisville to see what lessons we could bring back for Pittsburgh, and we ask the tough questions of leaders here.

Read Part 3 Of The Report: Team 4 examines what Pittsburgh leaders can do to clear the air.

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