Clean Air In the News

By Nathan Willcox,
John Rutkowski,
and James Hubbard

The Environmental Protection Agency will hold a hearing in Philadelphia today to solicit the public's views on a new proposal governing how much particle pollution, or "soot," should be allowed in our air. Here's a sneak peek of our views: The Bush administration's policy falls well short of what is needed to protect the health of the region's citizens.

Soot pollution, which originates mainly from coal-fired power plants and diesel trucks and buses, is the nation's most dangerous air pollutant. These tiny particles can bypass the body's natural defenses, and lodge deep within the lungs or even pass into the bloodstream, causing asthma attacks, heart attacks, and lung cancer. Soot pollution is so dangerous that it cuts short the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year, according to the EPA.

While air quality has improved in the United States, including in Pennsylvania and neighboring states, since the inception of the Clean Air Act in 1970, the EPA estimates that 88 million Americans still live in areas with unsafe levels of soot pollution.

The Mid-Atlantic region - which stretches roughly from Virginia to New Jersey - was particularly hard-hit. A recent PennEnvironment study found that Pennsylvania, with its coal-fueled energy plants and heavy truck traffic, ranked second nationally for the worst annual soot pollution among states. Philadelphia, northern New Jersey and Baltimore all made the Top 20 list for the worst soot pollution among major metropolitan areas, according to the study.

The Bush administration is in the process of reviewing the national air-quality standards for soot pollution, and the law requires that these standards be set to protect public health, based on the best available science.

Since 1996, more than 2,000 studies have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals confirming the damaging health effects of fine-particle pollution. Many of these studies have found adverse health effects at levels well below the current air-quality standards, meaning that levels of pollution that we previously thought were safe actually pose health risks.

Then last year, EPA's staff scientists and the administration's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee concluded that the current fine-particle standards are too weak to protect public health. As a result, they recommended that the administration strengthen the standards.

But once again, the Bush administration has rejected real science in favor of political science. Despite having acknowledged that soot pollution is our "most pressing air-quality problem," the Bush administration has chosen to disregard the advice of its own scientific advisers.

In the face of overwhelming evidence of the harmful effects of fine particles, the administration proposed in December to make only small changes to the standards that will have just a marginal impact on public health. In short, the administration has opted to largely maintain the status quo - as requested by the electric-power industry and other influential special interests that would have to clean up if the standards were strengthened.

It is unprecedented for an administration to disregard the recommendations of the independent Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

Moreover, reports have surfaced showing that the White House worked to cast doubt on the scientific need for tougher standards, making dozens of changes to EPA's draft standards before the policy was made public. For instance, the White House removed a sentence from the policy stating that the air-quality standards "may have a substantial impact on the life expectancy of the U.S. population."

Politics cannot trump science. That will be our message today, when the Bush administration holds its public hearing in Philadelphia - one of three hearings nationwide - on the proposed standards for soot pollution. We urge Pennsylvania's citizens to speak up with us.

Nathan Willcox is an energy and clean-air advocate with PennEnvironment (www.PennEnvironment.org) in Philadelphia. John Rutkowski has spent more than three decades in the field of respiratory care, and is a volunteer representing the American Lung Association of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. James Hubbard represents Prince George's County in the Maryland House of Delegates, where he also chairs the Public Health Committee.