Inversion: The Unfinished Business of Pittsburgh’s Air is a documentary film about the struggle for clean air in the greater Pittsburgh region. After a catastrophic fire at U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works pushed the region’s air quality from bad to worse, decades of grassroots organizing come to fruition as the community rallies to assert its right to clean air.

I am currently working on a documentary tentatively entitled, “Inversion: The Unfinished Business of Pittsburgh’s Air.” The film will be examining multiple “inversions” as they relate to air quality: 1. weather inversions affect the ability of pollution to disperse, 2. there is an inversion underway in the power relationship between citizens and governments/corporations with the incoming wave of low-cost community science sensors and software tools, and 3. there is an inversion underway in the nature of business as polluting industries using fossil fuel combustion shift to battery powered cars and trucks, often powered by clean renewable energy. I plan to weave these threads through a story focused on the massively destructive fire at U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works on December 24, 2018. The destruction from the fire ultimately forced U.S. Steel to shut off vital emissions control machinery, exposing nearby communities to emissions far exceeding U.S. Steel’s permitted levels for months on end.   

This film is currently in production and the threads and plot details are subject to change as I dive deeper into the project. Currently I am primarily focused on editing the core film but periodically pursue additional interviews to fill out the story. Please sign up here for our e-mail list to stay in the loop as the work progresses, and please contact me if you would like to contribute to the film’s costs. Every dollar helps.

Thank you!

Mark Dixon, Director/Producer

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