EDF Offers Mixed Review of New EPA Air Pollution Standards

(27 November, 1996 — Washington, DC) Reacting to a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed rule for revising and replacing current health-based standards for two key air pollutants, smog (ground-level ozone) and particulates, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today praised the Agency’s smog control plan, but criticized its proposal for curbing particulate matter that is potentially life-threatening.

Under the Clean Air Act, EPA is required to establish health standards that states and cities must meet in limiting the build-up of ground level ozone smog and fine particles, among other pollutants. The Act specifies that standards must be set at the level necessary to protect public health. Smog is created by the mixing of chemicals produced through the burning of fossil fuels, like coal and oil burned by power plants, factories, automobiles and a wide variety of industrial activities. Particulate matter is associated with coal-burning, as well as with a wide range of industrial, transportation and agricultural activities.

“Smog presents a serious threat to asthmatics, young children whose lungs are developing, and the elderly. Particulate matter in the air has been linked by public health experts to 60,000 premature deaths every year. Unfortunately, today’s action can only be seen as a half step. In finalizing this proposal over the next several months, EPA must recognize that the public health stakes are too high to compromise or ignore the dictates of science in setting the health-based standard for these critical pollutants,” said EDF senior attorney Joseph Goffman.

“Not only must EPA set smog and particulate matter standards that are scientifically sound and that really will protect public health, but the EPA, states and cities must also create pollution control programs that limit air pollution that often travels over broad regions, crossing state lines and jurisdictions. Unless environmental laws and policies address this long-distance regional transport of pollution, the air quality in American cities may never be healthful, no matter how scrupulously the health-based standards are set,” said EDF chief scientist and atmospheric chemist, Dr. Michael Oppenheimer.

“Broad regional air pollution problems are beginning to be addressed by Northeast states, from Virginia to Maine, which are working together as the Ozone Transport Commission to create a cap on total emissions of the oxides of nitrogen (NO_x) which contribute to groundlevel smog. This approach, which should be expanded to include the 37 Eastern-most states, uses the same kind of environmentally effective and economically affordable emissions reduction and trading system that Congress adopted in 1990 to halve and cap emissions of chemicals contributing to acid rain,” said Goffman. “In resisting acid rain controls industry claimed that reductions would cost $1,000 a ton. Under the capped emissions reduction and trading system, however, emissions allowances are being bought and sold for less than $100 a ton. Similar dramatic reductions in smog precursors and particulates can also be achieved at low cost.”