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When Kurt and Debra Miller found the three-story house on a hill in West Elizabeth 10 years ago, they fell in love with it.

The spacious Victorian has a big, wooded backyard and a large front lawn, perfect for their growing family -- perfect, except that it overlooks five factories that spew more than 15,000 tons of pollution into the air every year.

"We always wanted an old house, and we liked the school district," said Kurt Miller, 38. "We knew there was industry around and I shouldn't say I wasn't concerned about it, but I didn't start looking into it until after we moved."

Debra Miller, 36, and the couple's three children -- James, 13, Marie, 11, and Amanda, 7 -- all have asthma. The Millers don't believe pollution caused the disease -- which constricts sufferers' airways, leaving them gasping for air -- but they do think it might aggravate it.

Five of seven school districts immediately surrounding or downwind of industries in the Mon Valley report asthma rates among children above the regional average of 9 percent. New findings by an environmental group also show five toxic pollutants at levels that would exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for long-term exposure.

The chemicals have been linked to health problems ranging from throat irritation to leukemia.

Health officials have noticed. In January, the Allegheny County Health Department plans to install an air pollution monitor in Elizabeth. Depending on what it finds, the health department could impose tighter emission regulations, spokesman Guillermo Cole said.

In Washington County, upwind of the plants, most school districts have asthma levels below the 9 percent average. Downwind of the plants, the asthma rates drop off by the time the wind reaches Westmoreland County. In most Pennsylvania school districts, asthma is reported by the parents and not by physicians.

The school districts with rates exceeding the regional average were: South Allegheny with 14.8 percent of its children designated asthmatic, West Mifflin at 14.6 percent, West Jefferson Hills at 13.6 percent, Clairton City at 13.2 percent and Elizabeth-Forward at 11 percent.

"These are high for self-reported asthma," said Evelyn Talbott, co-director of a University of Pittsburgh center that studies environmental causes of disease. "There are so many factors aside from air pollution that can trigger asthma -- hay, pesticides, cigarette smoking, gas stoves, mold -- but that doesn't negate the fact that these are very high rates in an area with a lot of industry."

In 2004, the EPA determined that Allegheny, Westmoreland, Washington, Butler, Beaver and parts of Armstrong, Lawrence and Greene counties have unacceptable levels of soot and ozone. The worst pollution is around Liberty and Clairton.

George Simo, 68, and his friends are often chased off the large porch behind his Jefferson Hills home when the wind changes direction and floods his yard with the choking odors from the Mon Valley's industrial plants.

"It gets so strong, especially between 9 and 10 in the evening, sometimes you can hardly breathe," Simo said. "It's such a putrid smell."

Recent tests by Residents for a Clean and Healthy (REACH) Mon Valley, a community group founded by the environmental organization Clean Water Action, found that the air in southern Allegheny County is laced with at least 50 toxic chemicals, such as propane and the solvents toluene and ethylbenzene.

Half of the chemicals are neurotoxins and can irritate the respiratory system. Several are known to cause birth defects, cancer and reproductive or developmental disorders.

EPA does not set standards for acceptable exposure on many of those chemicals. Other readings were within EPA guidelines.

But REACH Mon Valley found that levels of five airborne pollutants would exceed EPA's long-term exposure standards: the carcinogens acrylonitrile and benzene, and the lung and throat irritants hydrogen sulfide and two forms of trimethylbenzene. All are colorless gases with characteristic smells ranging from rotten eggs to garlic and are used to make plastics, rubber, dyes, pesticides and other products.

Additionally, when there is more than one hazardous air pollutant in a residential area, the EPA takes the cumulative total of pollutants into consideration when deciding whether the air is dangerous. The more pollutants, the less of each you need to exceed the standard.

"We don't usually look at just one chemical, we take into consideration the total risk for all the chemicals we're looking at," said Dawn Iovan, an EPA toxicologist. "You want to make sure the combined risk stays below that level."

Of the 50 chemicals found by REACH Mon Valley, the county health department tests the area for only two: benzene and hydrogen sulfide. Last year, benzene levels in Liberty and in Downtown exceeded the EPA standard for 30 years of continuous exposure.

REACH Mon Valley took air samples on four different dates for periods lasting less than three minutes.

Those results might not be representative of typical levels, so the health department cannot draw any conclusions about health risks, Cole said. For example, the air pollution could have been unusually high if a company had a problem and released extra pollution or a weather inversion trapped polluted air.

Still, the samples -- which ranged from 1.5 to 1,270 times the EPA standard -- helped to prompt the health department to expand air monitoring by adding a station in Elizabeth. Officials have not determined yet what pollutants to test for, Cole said.

"We're going to have to look at the levels we find and compare them to available information on whether or not they might be hazardous to human health," Cole said.

According to county health department records, U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, Eastman Chemical Co.'s Elizabeth plant, Koppers Industries in Clairton and Kelly Run Sanitation in Elizabeth are the major emitters of the chemicals. Elrama Power Station in Washington County and Guardian Industries in Elizabeth also emit significant levels of other air pollutants.

Every plant is permitted by either the Allegheny County Health Department or the state Department of Environmental Protection to release a certain amount of air pollution. If companies exceed those levels, they can be cited or fined.

At more than 14,000 tons, U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works released most of the area's air pollution in 2004. In the past five years, the coke works has paid $149,250 in fines to the county's clean air fund.

The company is evaluating REACH Mon Valley's data and the health department's plan to put a monitor in Elizabeth, spokeswoman Carlee Vargo said. "We will continue to cooperate with Allegheny County Health Department officials," she said.

Last year, Mark White, the asthma coordinator for the state Department of Health, and his colleagues started a small study of a few school districts -- none in the Mon Valley -- to look for links between high levels of asthma and environmental exposures, such as pollution. They hope to expand their study.

"It would stand to reason that the areas with higher (asthma) rates might have those rates because they are polluted," White said.

REACH Mon Valley hopes that by drawing attention to the area's air pollution, better monitoring and tighter regulations on emissions will be imposed on industries.

Without some change, the area's asthmatic children will continue to breathe some of the most polluted air in Western Pennsylvania.

"Asthma attacks happen often enough here," said Sally Kunkel, the school nurse for the 950-student Clairton City School District for 13 years. "I'd say I see probably at least 10 kids a week."

In October, she had to call an ambulance for a 7-year-old girl.

"I took a listen (to her lungs) and she wasn't moving air -- you could tell her lungs were tight," Kunkel said.

The girl was hospitalized and diagnosed with asthma. She now has an inhaler that she uses daily, Kunkel said.

In West Elizabeth, Kurt and Debra Miller's 13-year-old son James uses two different inhalers several times a day. He has a full-blown asthma attack about once a year. His most recent attack occurred while he was camping last year.

"I could barely breathe," said James, who is active in Boy Scouts and practices karate. "I was wheezing and I could only walk a few steps and then I had to rest."

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