Historic US Steel (AS&W) Donora Plant | mill, steelworks, closed

 mill, steelworks, closed

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Industrialists had taken a chance by investing in sprawling steel, wire and zinc mills on the western banks of the Monongahela River in what would become known as Donora, Pa., in 1901. Little did they know that an environmental disaster combined with difficult labor relations would cause this complex to become the first of its kind to permanently shut down decades later in the fall of America's Industrial Revolution.

Between October 26 and October 31, 1948 an air inversion trapped industrial effluent (air pollution) from the US Steel's American Steel and Wire plant and especially the Donora Zinc Works. "In three days, 18 people died... After the inversion lifted, another 50 died. Hundreds more finished the rest of their lives with damaged lungs and hearts. But another 40 years would pass before the whole truth about Donora's bad air made public-health history." [1]

scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2008/10/donora-smog-truth-w...

The Steel and Wire plant extended about 2 miles south of the Donora-Webster bridge. This plant was built in 1900. The plant made wire, nails, barbed wire, welding rods and other products.

The main components of the Steel and Wire plant were:

Blast furnace
Open hearth
Blooming and billet mills
Rod mills
Wire mills
Plumes of smoke from the steel and wire factory are carried by the wind. Major pollutant in these plumes were sulfur dioxide and particulate matter.

The Zinc plant extended about 1 mile north of the bridge. This plant was built in 1915.

Components of the zinc plant:

roasters
sintering plant
zinc spelters
waste heat boilers
Waelz plant
dross plant
sulfuric acid plant
cadmium plant
The first step in the process of zinc smelting is to roast the zinc sulfide ore and replace the sulfur with oxygen. The hot gases resulting from this process contain sulfur dioxide and they are passed to another tower and used to make sulfuric acid. However, there is still sulfur in the zinc that eventually is given off as sulfur dioxide in later steps.

The products of the plant included:

zinc
cadmium
unrefined lead
sulfuric acid
Plumes of smoke from the zinc factory are carried by the wind. These plumes contained large amounts of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other particulate matter.


Both plants had closed by 1966.