Opinion ID: 397842
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fugitive Emissions

Text: 3 Basic oxygen process furnaces have become the principal means of raw steel production in the United States. Employing high-pressure oxygen during fabrication, they turn out steel more quickly and in greater quantities than was ever possible by the use of traditional furnaces. 6 These gains in higher yield, however, have not been achieved without some environmental losses. Enormous amounts of particulate matter and toxic gas are released as oxygen is forced into the furnace at sonic speeds. 7 Most are collected by a giant stationary control hood mounted above the furnace. 8 These so-called stack, or primary, emissions are then ducted away to the plant's pollution control equipment, 9 where substantially all particulate matter is removed before the air thus cleaned is vented into the atmosphere through a smokestack. Other emissions, however-notably those which escape the furnace when it is tipped away from the hood during loading or pouring operations-never enter the pollution control system. Instead, these secondary, or fugitive, emissions enter the atmosphere untreated, either through ventilation holes in the roof or other openings in the building housing the furnace. 10 Current nonregulation of these latter emissions is the matter lying at the heart of the controversy before us.