EPA tightens air standards

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration imposed stricter standards on the nation’s air quality Thursday for the first time in nearly a decade, ruling that communities nationwide must cut back on the amount of soot in the air on any given day.

The agency did not go as far its own scientists had urged in curbing soot, which is linked to heart and lung disease as well as childhood asthma. The decision sparked complaints on both sides of the pollution debate, with public health experts saying it was inadequate and industry officials calling it too stringent.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule lowers the limit on how much fine particulate matter Americans can be exposed to over a 24-hour period, cutting the existing standard of 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air down to 35. It leaves unchanged, however, the annual limit for “fine particulate matter,” or soot, in the air. That standard remains at an average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter per day over the course of a year.

EPA’s scientific advisory panel voted overwhelmingly last year to recommend cutting the annual amount of soot Americans breathe, from a daily average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter to either 13 or 14 micrograms. But William Wehrum, EPA’s acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, said officials concluded the current annual standard “is in fact adequate to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety, and there isn’t sufficient evidence to justify a tightening of that standard.”

Under federal law, officials are supposed to revise air quality rules every five years to reflect the latest scientific findings, and Wehrum said the Supreme Court has ruled that officials should be “no more and no less stringent” than needed to protect public health. “We have to hit the sweet spot here,” he said.

Public health activists, who noted that 60,000 Americans are estimated to die prematurely each year because of air pollution, were harsh in their assessment. According to an EPA analysis, the stricter standards endorsed by the scientific advisory panel would have reduced air pollution-related deaths in nine cities by 48 percent, while the administration’s new rules would cut deaths in those same cities by 22 percent.

“It is the single worst action the Bush administration has taken on air pollution,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch. “With this decision, the Bush administration has abdicated its responsibility to protect breathers from dangers in the air.”

Dan Riedinger, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, whose members generate 60 percent of the nation’s electricity, attacked the administration from the opposite perspective.

Power plants have cut their fine particulate emissions by 40 percent since 1980, he said, and the industry plans to spend more than $50 billion to cut emissions an additional 60 percent in Eastern states.

“EPA persists in overemphasizing studies that suggest a possible benefit to tightening the air quality standard, while downplaying those suggesting that doing so may not provide the health benefits EPA is seeking to achieve,” Riedinger said. “Under the new standards, hundreds of counties that currently meet existing air quality standards will be in violation of the new ones, requiring tens of billions of dollars in annual expenditures to reduce emissions from all sectors of the economy.”

The new rules take effect in 2015; by then the affected communities must draft plans for reducing air pollution or risk losing federal funds.

Wehrum estimated that when the new rules take effect, about 32 new counties – most of them in Southern California – will be out of compliance.