World's Biggest Cement Maker Gets Bigger

The world's largest cement maker, Lafarge SA, is getting even bigger, witht he $12.9 billion purchase of Egypt's Orascom Construction Industries, according to the Toronto Star.

Lafarge has plants throughout the world, including several in the United States (including an Aplena, Mich. plant that is the 7th most polluting facility in the Environmental Protection Agency's accounting of stone clay and glass manufacturers.)

Cement making burns a lot of coal, produces a lot of carbon dioxide, a lot of toxic mercury, a lot of acid rain and a lot of smog and ozone. While federal regulators have cracked down on the use of coal to generate electricity with an ever more stringent set of pollution reduction rules, cement making has escaped much regulation. In New York, for instance, cement plants produce more mercury than electric power plants.

One can only wonder that if cement makers have avoided regulation so far, that consolidating more power and wealth in fewer companies will only make it more difficult to rein in an important source of pollution worldwide.

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