Our Air

November 20, 2006

EPA's New Air Quality Standards Endanger Public Health

Here's something that will take your breath away. The EPA, charged with protecting our environment, has adopted new air quality standards that actually put our environment and health at greater risk. At issue is the standard for annual releases of fine particulate concentrations. Fine particulates are an insidious form of pollution that originates from a wide variety of sources, including car exhaust, smokestacks and coal-fired power plants. Composed of microscopic particles 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair, they are easily inhaled into the lungs, causing chronic, intractable and ultimately, fatal, pulmonary disease.

They are also implicated in the increased incidence of cardiac arrhythmias, heart attacks, strokes, cancer and asthma attacks, resulting in thousands of hospital admissions, doctor visits and millions of lost school and work days.

The EPA, however, declined to strengthen the nation's annual standard for fine particulate pollution concentration. The agency did strengthen the 24-hour fine particle standard; however, public health experts and its own analysts indicate that the new standard (which drops from 65 micrograms per cubic meter to 35 micrograms per cubic meter) is still too week. In proposing these standards, EPA has ignored the recommendations of its own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, the advice of the Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, the recommendations of 100 leading research scientists and physicians, and comments from two dozen national and local health organizations.

The EPA's disregard of such evidence is deeply troubling to the scientific community. Its "action is truly breath-taking in ignoring the dangerous impact of particulate pollution on America's hearts and lungs," says Dr. John Balbus, health program director for Environmental Defense and co-founder of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children's Health and the Environment. "By ignoring medical science, EPA is fundamentally failing to protect Americans from death and serious disease associated with particulate pollution."