EPA: Current smog standards are too weak to protect health

WASHINGTON — Pollution standards are too weak to protect people from the air they breathe, the EPA's chief declared Thursday. He recommended tougher limits on the smog that makes children cough and asthmatics wheeze from Los Angeles to Houston to New York.

Still, under pressure from big business, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson left the door open to keeping the rules as they are.

It's the Environmental Protection Agency's first new recommendation since 1997 for ground-level ozone, the principal component of smog — that noxious combination of car exhaust, industrial emissions and gasoline vapors aggravated by summertime sun and heat.

Johnson recommended reducing current smog standards by 11 percent to 17 percent. Among other benefits, EPA estimated this could reduce by 30 percent to 60 percent the risk of children having trouble breathing normally.

"Based upon the current science I have concluded that the current standard is insufficient to protect public health," Johnson told reporters on a conference call, noting that ozone can harm the lungs and aggravate asthma.

Studies have linked increased ozone levels with higher hospital admissions. EPA will release an impact analysis of its proposal in a few weeks that will detail health benefits and economic costs.

EPA measures smog by calculating the concentration of ozone molecules in the atmosphere over an eight-hour period. The current standard is .084 parts per million. EPA is proposing reducing that to between .070 and .075 parts per million.

The agency will take public comment for 90 days and settle on a final number by March 12, 2008. However, it also is soliciting comments on alternate standards, including keeping the current one or going down to .060 parts per million.

Environmentalists criticized the EPA's decision to consider keeping the current standard, noting that the agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee has said the standard should be no higher than .070 parts per million.

That's also the health standard California established independently last year, though the state's standard has no regulatory impact.

"The science overwhelmingly supports closing the door on the current standard once and for all," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Instead of listening to science, the administrator seems to be intent on listening to the wish lists of polluting industries."

Business and industry groups including the National Association of Manufacturers have been lobbying for the smog standard to stay the same, contending that lowering it would be costly and unnecessary. Although EPA says ozone levels have dropped 21 percent nationwide since 1980, states are still working to meet the smog levels set in 1997 because doing so takes years.

"We recognize that the EPA has a duty to protect public health, and studies have shown implementing the current standard will do just that," said NAM President John Engler. "There is still a long way to go to meeting the current standard. Therefore we see no reason to revise the current standard."

Johnson was asked repeatedly to explain why he would accept comment on keeping a standard that he himself, a career scientist, has determined doesn't adequately protect health. Environmentalists contended industry lobbying was the reason, but Johnson didn't respond directly to that allegation.

"Based upon the science, I do not believe there is scientific justification for retaining the current standard. Hence I am proposing to toughen the standard," he said. "But I am taking comment on the full range of what I have heard people ask for."

The EPA, which monitors 639 counties nationwide, says 104 of them are out of compliance with the current standard. If the standard went to .075 parts per million, 398 counties would be out of compliance, and if it went to .070 parts per million, 533 counties would be out of compliance.

States with noncompliance areas must come up with implementation plans to come into compliance or face a loss of federal highway funds. Most of the problem areas are in California, Texas, the Atlanta area, the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic and the Upper Midwest.

Ozone levels measured between 2003-2005, the most recent period for which EPA data was available, show many areas that are compliant with the current levels would be out of compliance with the proposed ones. For example, the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area of New York State recorded .082 parts per million; Fort Wayne, Indiana .083 parts per million; and Phoenix-Mesa, Ariz., .084 parts per million.

Under the Clean Air Act, EPA is supposed to review standards on ozone and other pollutants every five years. When that didn't happen five years ago, a lawsuit by the American Lung Association led to a settlement between EPA and advocacy groups to propose revised levels for smog. Thursday was the deadline for that proposal to be offered.