EPA chided over rules on dust
In an unprecedented action, the Environmental Protection Agency’s own scientific panel on Friday challenged the agency’s proposed public health standards governing soot and dust.
The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, mandated by Congress to review such proposals, asserted Friday that the standards put forward by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson ignored most of the committee’s earlier recommendations and could lead to additional heart attacks, lung cancer and other respiratory ailments.
In December, Johnson proposed to slightly tighten the health standards that state and local governments must meet in regulating industries and other sources of pollution. But those standards, governing the smallest and most hazardous particles of soot, were substantially weaker than what was recommended by the scientists.
Johnson also proposed to exempt rural areas and mining and agriculture industries from standards governing larger coarse particles, and he declined to adopt haze reduction standards proposed by the panel.
EPA officials are taking public comment on the proposed rules through April and plan to meet a court deadline to adopt final standards by September.
Some panel members called the administrator’s actions “egregious” and said his proposals “twisted” or “misrepresented” their recommendations.
“We are obligated to recommend something beneficial to public health,” said Morton Lippmann, professor of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine, who is the panel’s longest-serving member.
After a nearly four-hour teleconference meeting Friday, the committee members decided to “take the high road” and write a letter to Johnson clearly laying out the scientific evidence for their conclusions and urging him to reconsider his proposals.
It was the first time since the adoption of the Clean Air Act nearly 30 years ago that the committee has asked the EPA to change course, according to EPA staff and committee members.
Several members said Johnson’s proposals incorrectly said the committee had called for eliminating the regulation of coarse particulates in rural areas, and for mining and agriculture.
Those exemptions have been lambasted by state air regulators across the nation.
Johnson was not available for comment on Friday. But Bill Wehrum, acting air chief for the agency, said “we greatly respect the input CASAC has given us so far. If they choose to give us further input we will … certainly consider it carefully as we move forward to make any final decision.”
He said the agency had made “every effort” to explain why it did not follow all of the panel’s findings, and that agency officials were seeking broad comment on the panel’s recommendations as well as the proposed rules.
“The science behind particulate matter is extremely complex, and there’s a lot of it out there,” Wehrum said. “We know there’s a diversity of opinion.”