Air Quality in and around Port Talbot

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:01 pm on 18 September 2018.

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Photo of David Rees David Rees Labour 2:01, 18 September 2018

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. I'm sure that there are many issues that you are taking on board. The monitoring of air quality has been focused upon PM10s and PM2.5s—understandable, because they're the ones that are recognised to have the biggest impact on people's health—but we have seen a large increase in what is known as nuisance dust fallout from the Port Talbot steelworks across the whole Port Talbot area. Now, I recognise that this perhaps is not considered a health issue, but it is definitely a health issue—people are breathing this in, they're walking it through their houses, they've got it on their cars and properties—and it is a real problem for many of my constituents. There's also no doubt that this comes from the Tata steelworks, and I've had discussions with the management of Tata to look at what they're doing about this. There are plans for longer term problems to be resolved through improving the environment, but there's a short-term issue about doing it now. What can we do about the production processes to ensure that this product is reduced and limited as best we can? Will you as a Government actually look at the ways you can work with Tata to look at the long-term solutions? I'll just remind you that the state aid of the EU doesn't affect environmental options, so it's a possibility of looking at those longer-term solutions. But can you also have discussions with Tata to look at how they can be a responsible neighbour to ensure that the fallouts that we are experiencing in Port Talbot are reduced so that we don't get a situation where, every morning, people wake up to either black or red dust on their gardens, on their cars or on their windowsills and have to look at that every single day? This has gone on and it's unacceptable. We need, now, action to ensure that Tata takes their responsibility seriously.