A brass factory in East Alton, Illinois pumped lead into the air at nearly six times the legal limit, the company’s own stack tests confirmed it, and residents had been breathing it for years before anything changed.

The Full Story

A Corporation That Knew, Waited, and Kept Producing

Wieland Rolled Products North America, LLC operates a brass and bronze production plant at 305 Lewis and Clark Boulevard in East Alton, Illinois. The facility runs seven casting units — five DC Casting Units and two Ascast Casting Units — each capable of producing thousands of pounds of molten metal. That production process generates toxic emissions, including lead, a neurotoxin with no safe level of exposure.

The EPA showed up for a Clean Air Act inspection in June 2017. What inspectors saw was not subtle: casting units venting white smoke through an open roof, emissions escaping uncaptured into the surrounding air. Between 9:43 AM and 9:56 AM on June 28, 2017, EPA observers recorded a maximum six-minute average opacity of 17.7% at the facility roof vent. The legal limit under federal New Source Performance Standards is 10%. Wieland was blowing nearly twice that.

The EPA issued a Notice and Finding of Violation in December 2019 — two and a half years after the inspection. Representatives from the company and the agency discussed it in February 2020. The discussion did not stop the lead.

Three Generations of Fixes, One Persistent Problem

According to the settlement document, Wieland went through three separate generations of upgraded hooding systems on its DC Casting Units between 2019 and August 2022. Each generation added new components: fume collection cowls, damper interlocks, retractable canopies. The third generation, installed across all five DC units by August 2022, was supposed to be the solution.

But the lead problem was separate. In September 2019, Wieland conducted a stack test of one baghouse — Baghouse 5 — and reported lead emissions of 0.00376 lbs/hour from that unit alone. The problem: Baghouse 5 is only one of three baghouses controlling lead from the facility’s casting units. The company’s report covered one-third of the picture.

When the EPA issued a second Finding of Violation in March 2024, the full picture had finally been measured. Stack tests conducted across all three baghouses in 2023 revealed a combined maximum lead emission rate of 0.02936 lbs/hour — nearly six times the permitted limit of 0.005 lbs/hour. On an annual basis, the worst-case combined lead output hit 0.115 tons per year, against a legal ceiling of 0.025 tons per year.

Wieland’s fix, once finally implemented, was to swap filter elements inside Baghouse 5. In mid-October 2023, the company replaced the old Camcorp FM0103 pleated filter elements with higher-efficiency FM0203 units. A follow-up stack test in January 2024 showed compliance. The question the settlement document does not answer: why did it take a second federal violation notice, seven years after the first inspection, to install a filter upgrade?

The Non-Financial Ledger

What a Fine Can’t Repay

Lead is not a regulatory abstraction. Lead is a heavy metal that destroys human brains, and it does its worst damage to the brains of children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established that there is no safe blood lead level in children. Even tiny exposures permanently reduce IQ, impair impulse control, and cause lifelong behavioral and neurological deficits. The families living in and around East Alton, Illinois were never asked whether they consented to breathe it.

East Alton sits in Madison County, Illinois, a stretch of the Mississippi River valley that has carried the industrial burden of American manufacturing for generations. The people who live there are, overwhelmingly, working-class and lower-income. They do not have the option to purchase air filters, move to wealthier zip codes with cleaner air, or hire lobbyists to protect their lungs. The facility that was releasing excess lead into their air employed their neighbors. That is the trap: the same corporation that poisoned the community also paid the community’s wages.

The settlement document establishes that the EPA’s inspectors observed illegal emissions from the factory roof in June 2017. The second Finding of Violation — the one specifically targeting lead — did not arrive until March 2024. In the gap between those two dates, seven years passed. Children born in 2017 started first grade. Toddlers who played in backyards within range of that plume grew up. The enforcement machinery moved at its own pace while the emissions moved at theirs.

The settlement Wieland signed requires the company to pay $962,985 (roughly the cost of buying 13 median-priced American homes, or funding a pediatric neurology clinic for several years). That money goes to the federal government, not to the residents of East Alton. No medical monitoring program is established. No community health fund is created. No soil or blood testing is mandated. The people most exposed to the emissions receive no direct benefit from this settlement. The fine is paid, the case is closed, and the neighborhood moves on, carrying whatever it carries.

What also deserves naming is the structural absurdity of the fix. Wieland’s solution to its catastrophic baghouse lead readings was to swap a filter cartridge. The Camcorp FM0103 pleated filter elements in Baghouse 5 were swapped for the FM0203 high-efficiency version in mid-October 2023. A follow-up test in January 2024 showed compliance. This was not a complex engineering challenge. This was not an expensive infrastructure overhaul. This was a filter replacement. The community breathed elevated lead concentrations for years while the solution sat in a parts catalog.

The settlement document notes that Wieland’s cooperation and “prompt return to compliance” were factors in determining the penalty amount. The EPA considered the company’s cooperation a mitigating factor. There is no language anywhere in this document that reflects on what the years of non-compliance cost the people breathing the air outside the fence line.

Legal Receipts

Straight from the Document. Read Every Word.

“The combined maximum lead emission rate from all three baghouses would therefore be 0.02936 lbs/hour, which exceeds the 0.005 lbs/hour CAAPP lead emissions limit.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Stipulated Fact ¶41

“The combined potential maximum worst case alloy specific annual lead emissions from all three baghouses would be 0.115 tons/year, which exceeds the 0.025 tons/year CAAPP lead emissions limit.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Stipulated Fact ¶42

“During the 2017 Inspection, EPA also collected Method 9 readings of visible emissions at the Facility. Between 9:43 AM and 9:56 AM, EPA observed white emissions from the Facility Roof Vent with a maximum 6-minute average opacity of 17.7%.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Stipulated Fact ¶30

“Respondent: neither admits nor denies the allegations stated in Section E of this CAFO; consents to the assessment of a civil penalty as stated below; consents to any conditions specified in this CAFO; waives any right to contest the allegations set forth in Section E of this CAFO; and waives its right to appeal this CAFO.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Terms of Consent Agreement ¶49(b–f)

“Nothing in this CAFO limits the power of the EPA to undertake any action against Respondent or any person in response to conditions that may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health, welfare, or the environment.” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Effect of Consent Agreement ¶71

“Condition 4.1.2 (h)(i)(A) of Wieland’s Revised CAAPP permit states that ‘pursuant to Construction Permit #03060079 lead emissions from Ascast furnaces 1, Ascast furnaces 2, and #1 through #5 DC Casting Unit shall not exceed the following limits 0.005 lbs/hour and 0.025 tons/year.'” — EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Stipulated Fact ¶38

Societal Impact Mapping

The Damage Runs Deeper Than the Fine

What Now?

Who to Watch. What to Demand. Where to Push.

Corporate Leadership to Watch

• Wieland Rolled Products North America, LLC — The direct respondent in this action. Operates the East Alton, Illinois facility.
• Wieland Werke AG — The German parent company that merged with Global Brass and Copper Holdings in April 2019 and assumed control of this operation.
• Authorized Representative, Wieland Rolled Products (signed consent via email: ashley.huber@wieland.com) — The individual who executed the consent agreement on behalf of the corporation.

Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

• U.S. EPA Region 5 Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division — Issued both violation notices and executed this settlement. The body to contact with public comments and data requests.
• Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) — State-level agency that issues the facility’s CAAPP operating permit and received copies of federal violation notices.
• EPA Air Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Branch, Region 5 — Direct enforcement contact: R5airenforcement@epa.gov
• OSHA — Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Lead exposure limits for workers at the facility fall under OSHA’s jurisdiction, separate from the Clean Air Act.
• Illinois Attorney General’s Office — State-level authority with concurrent enforcement powers over environmental violations affecting Illinois communities.

The Watchlist

• The settlement acknowledges this enforcement action must be considered in any future compliance history review. Watch for future violations at this facility and whether this record is applied.
• Any violation of this settlement carries a potential civil penalty of up to $124,426 per day per violation. EPA has reserved the right to pursue criminal sanctions.
• The EPA specifically reserved the right to revoke this settlement if Wieland’s representations are found to be materially false or inaccurate.

What you can actually do right now: If you live near East Alton or know people who do, connect with local environmental justice organizations in Madison County. Request public air quality monitoring data through Illinois EPA’s public records processes. Contact your state representative and demand mandatory community health monitoring as part of any future settlement for environmental violations in residential areas. Support mutual aid networks in the Metro East Illinois region that serve working-class families affected by industrial pollution. The settlement is closed. The community organizing does not have to be.