Despite the pleas of environmental groups and Lincoln residents, the Allegheny County Board of Health has approved a federally mandated air pollution control plan for the Liberty-Clairton area that fails to reduce pollution below federal health standards for part of that area.

On Wednesday, as the region experienced its second straight Air Quality Action Day due to high air pollution readings, the board voted unanimously to approve the plan even though the county's own study found that more than 80 families in Lincoln will continue to live with unhealthy concentrations of sooty pollution.

The plan, which must reduce tiny airborne particles -- known as PM2.5 because they are smaller than 2.5 micrometers -- to meet 1997 federal air standards, will be submitted to the state Department of Environmental Protection and then handed to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The tiny particles are harmful because they can be drawn deeply into the lungs. Studies have shown they can cause or aggravate a variety of health problems, including asthma, cardiac and respiratory disease.

"It's disappointing. The board took the easy way out," said Joe Osborne, legal director for the Group Against Smog and Pollution, who had urged the board to reject the plan. He said GASP will appeal the county's approval of the plan because it fails to protect the health of Lincoln residents.

The plan counts on emissions reductions from power plants in Ohio and operational improvements and equipment upgrades at U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works to reduce air pollution in the Monongahela River valley communities of Clairton, Glassport, Liberty and Lincoln.

Jim Thompson, manager of the county Air Quality Program that produced the state implementation plan for the federal non-attainment area, told the board that neither the DEP nor the EPA has raised objections to it and said it meets all requirements of the federal Clean Air Act.

Mr. Thompson said that U.S. Steel has resumed work on its $1.2 billion renovation and coke oven replacement project in Clairton and is ahead of schedule in meeting the terms of a consent order that requires it to shut down six of 12 old coke batteries by 2013, make improvements to the others and install a new low-emissions quench tower.

But Damian Nunimaker, a Lincoln resident who suffers from asthma, said the air is so bad in the community that he plans to move. He admonished the health board for approving a plan under which the area won't meet health standards until 2015 and asked the board to consider Lincoln residents who have chronic health problems due to their long-term exposure to the pollution.

"Consider the people who are concerned about their exposure," he said. "You are nurses and doctors. The people there depend on you."

The Liberty-Clairton area was declared in "non-attainment" of 1997 federal PM2.5 standards in 2005 and the state implementation plan approved Wednesday was due to the EPA in 2008. Tighter, health-based, PM2.5 standards were established in 2006 and the region was notified last year that it doesn't meet those pollution limits either.

Mr. Thompson said the county is already working on a new state implementation plan.

Last June an EPA Toxics Assessment Report found that residents of Clairton and Glassport are exposed to toxic air pollutants that make their risk of getting cancer around 20 times greater than the national average. The report calculated the cancer risk for Clairton residents at 762 in 1 million, and for Glassport residents at 700 in 1 million, the third- and fourth-highest risk rates in the nation.

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