John Heller, Post-Gazette Nick Solic, a smoke reader for the Allegheny County Health Department, watches emissions from smokestacks across the Allegheny River from the Strip District. Click photo for larger image.

For 40 mundane minutes, Nick Solic focused his cold stare on a food-company smokestack along the Allegheny River, checking his wristwatch every 15 seconds and recording his readings on an official document.

And after charting a page full of zeros, he was ready to declare Bay Valley Foods LLC in the former Heinz plant on the North Side to be in full compliance with Allegheny County anti-pollution regulations.

Then it happened.

Preparing to leave, Mr. Solic spotted a wisp of black smoke rising from the smokestack. It burgeoned into a black plume and ended up poised over the smokestack like some black industrial genie, prompting Mr. Solic to jot down ever larger numbers -- 5, 15, then 20, and ultimately 35 on his document.

In only 200 seconds, full compliance deteriorated into a borderline violation of Allegheny County visible emission standards. Enforcement action could lead to a fine and pressure upon the company to right its smoky wrongs.

John Heller, Post-Gazette Darrell F. Stern Jr., air monitoring section chief with the department, checks the telescope mounted atop a building across from Mellon Arena that collects a light beam shot from the top of Gumberg Library at Duquesne University. In this photo, the spot of light is barely visible near the arena's sloped roof, directly above Mr. Stern's wrist. Click photo for larger image.

Mr. Solic, with his smoke-gray ponytail and goatee, is a certified smoke reader with the Allegheny County Health Department -- a low-tech job requiring a pen and watch and well-trained peepers.

Each year, he and other health department employees must be recertified to read the opacity of smoke puffing from smokestacks as the only legal means to document violations of county pollution standards.

But that soon could change.

The health department will hold a public hearing at 10 a.m. July 6 in the health department's Clack Health Center, Building 7, 39th Street and Penn Avenue in Lawrenceville, on a proposal to legalize opacity monitors installed inside smokestacks to gather pollution data and document violations.

Those wishing to testify must notify the health department no later than 24 hours before the hearing by calling 412-578-8008.

Because opacity monitors operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the proposal would tighten compliance for companies that regularly send smoke up their stacks.

It's the latest high-tech advance for the health department, which also has purchased cutting-edge Swedish equipment that reads a beam of light flashed across the sky to record levels of air toxins.

Health department officials said the equipment will increase knowledge of air pollution, who's doing the polluting, and how best to reduce pollution countywide.

When it comes to smokestacks, the current practice requires smoke readers to observe each one for about an hour every three months. Smoke readers must be the right distance and angle from smokestacks with the sun to their backs to make legal readings.

Even if the opacity-monitor proposal is adopted, smoke readers will not go the way of coopers, wheelwrights and cobblers.

They will continue reading smoke emitted by smaller businesses that lack opacity monitors and force compliance of burning ordinances.

For now, smoke readers spend only a fraction of the workday reading smoke, and perform many other health-department duties. Legalizing opacity meters will generate reams of data that must be reviewed for evidence of violations. So the workload likely will increase.

"We wear a dozen hats, but never more than five at a time," Mr. Solic said.

That Wednesday morning, while he eyeballed the smokestack, emissions from a building behind him caught his sky-riveted attention.

A coffee company was roasting beans, sending a white plume of "volatile organic compounds" into Strip District skies. The delicious smell did not hide the fact that so-called VOCs are pollutants. Such smokestacks should include incinerators to burn off VOC pollutants, he said.

Mr. Solic snapped photographs of the smoke and said he'll warn the company to control its emissions or face fines.

"My son says I'm the air pollution police," he said.

The major polluters countywide include two coke operations, Shenango Inc. on Neville Island and U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works. Calgon, also on Neville Island, has received citations for pollution violations, Mr. Solic said.

But for the most part, he said, the era of smoky skies is long gone.

Low to high tech

Along with opacity monitors, the health department has stepped into the modern world with more sophisticated equipment to measure pollution.

The department has purchased three Opsis systems, produced in Sweden, that shine a beam of light through the air to a telescope 600 meters away. The telescope reads light absorption to determine what toxins are in the air.

Each of 13 air toxins absorb different bandwidths of light, and information about pollutant levels is sent every five minutes to a health department computer.

"The largest readings of air toxins in the downtown area come from traffic, which produces spikes during the morning and afternoon rush hours," said Darrell F. Stern Jr., the department air monitoring section head.

The health department owns three Opsis systems, each of which costs about $80,000.

One Opsis system in the city sends a light beam from Gumberg Library on the Duquesne University campus to the top of Flag Plaza, the Boy Scouts of America's Greater Pittsburgh Council headquarters near Mellon Arena.

With the new equipment, the health department is participating in an air-toxin study to help estimate the health impact on city dwellers. Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health also are participating in the study.

Other Opsis systems are set up in Neville Island to focus on industrial pollution there and South Fayette.

Mr. Stern said Pittsburgh is one of the first cities to have such technology. The data collected will be sent to a national data base.

Pollutants of current concern include ozone and fine particulate matter, he said.

The county uses more conventional methods to measure sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulate matter, he said.

"Things have improved, but we still have a lot of problems," Mr. Stern said, noting elevated levels of mercury and particulate matter in county air. "There always are challenges, but we now have the measurement tool to see if we are meeting those challenges."