Clean Air News

Philadelphia, PA—At a hearing held by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Philadelphia today, local citizens joined with religious groups, public officials, researchers and public health advocates from across the Mid-Atlantic region in sharply criticizing the Bush administration’s proposed air quality standards for fine particle, or “soot,” pollution. The groups called on the administration to substantially strengthen the fine particle standards, which disregard the recommendations of the Bush administration’s own scientific advisors and EPA staff scientists.

Over 60 people testified at today’s hearing, where citizens described their experiences with particle pollution, and public health advocates highlighted the scientific consensus on the need to substantially strengthen the health-based air quality standards for fine particle pollution. Hearings on the administration’s proposal were also held today in San Francisco and Chicago.

A press conference was held outside the hearing, featuring a New Jersey family living with asthma, Maryland State Delegate James Hubbard, Dr. George Thurston from the NYU School of Medicine, and representatives from the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, PennEnvironment and the American Lung Association.

“Evidence increasingly shows that air pollution plays a major role as a trigger for asthma episodes,” said Natalie McCloskie. As the mother in a family living with asthma, Natalie knows all too well. “Three of my six children battle with this debilitating disease every day. Asthma has become a part of our lifestyle—a part that could be eliminated from our everyday lives if significant strides were made by adopting standards for pollution at levels that protect public health.”

“As state legislators, it is our job to ensure our constituents are protected from pollution and we expect the same from officials in Washington. Today, 59 legislators from 40 states joined me in urging the EPA to protect children's health by following its own scientific advisors recommendations for cleaning up our air,” said Maryland Delegate Hubbard, who chairs the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators.

“The EPA Administrator's PM2.5 standards proposal fails to adequately consider the full range of recent scientific studies that clearly indicate significant particulate matter air pollution health effects are occurring at concentrations below the EPA's proposed new standards,” said Dr. George Thurston, Associate Professor of Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine. “If this is not rectified by imposing stronger short- and long-term PM2.5 standards than proposed on January 17th, the EPA's own calculations indicate that thousands of Americans will needlessly die each year from particle air pollution.”

“We have a strong moral obligation to set standards that protect all people,” said Rev. Sandra L. Strauss, Director of Public Advocacy for the Pennsylvania Council of Churches. “It is immoral and wrong to sacrifice the health of our most vulnerable citizens, those who live in the "wrong" places, and those who work in industries that are exempt from more stringent standards.”

“State and local air regulators are concerned that if EPA doesn't follow the recommendations of its own scientific advisors, there will be significant increases in premature mortality throughout the country,” said Wick Havens, Chief of the Division of Air Resources Management at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Air Quality, representing STAPPA and ALAPCO, a national association of state and local air pollution control officials.

“Soot pollution is a deadly threat to Philadelphia and the entire Mid-Atlantic region,” said Nathan Willcox, energy and clean air advocate with PennEnvironment. “Unfortunately, the Bush administration has opted for political science over real science, ignoring the need for much stronger soot standards in order to please polluting industries.”

“The EPA proposal falls far short of what is necessary to protect public health,” said Paul G. Billings, Vice President of National Policy & Advocacy for the American Lung Association. “Particle pollution is the nation's most dangerous air pollutant, causing asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer.”

Fine particles are the nation’s deadliest air pollutant. They can bypass the body’s natural defenses and lodge deep in the lungs or even pass into the bloodstream, causing serious respiratory and cardiovascular problems, such as asthma attacks, heart attacks, lung cancer, and strokes. Fine particles also cause thousands of premature deaths every year in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Combustion sources such as power plants and diesel engines are the largest sources of fine particle pollution. Power plants in the Mid-Atlantic region—especially the coal-fired power plants in western Pennsylvania—release high levels of fine particle pollution, as do the diesel trucks and buses traveling on the region’s many major highways.

According to a recent PennEnvironment report, "Plagued by Pollution", in 2004 fine particle levels exceeded national air quality standards for soot pollution in nearly half the states, including Pennsylvania, which ranked 2nd in the nation for the worst annual soot pollution among states. Pittsburgh, Baltimore-Towson, Northern New Jersey-New York City-Long Island, and Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington ranked 2nd, 9th, 12th, and 16th respectively nationwide for the worst annual soot pollution among major metropolitan areas.

Others submitting testimony today in favor of much stronger fine particle standards included representatives from the Departments of Environmental Protection of New Jersey and Maine, Pennsylvania State Representative Michael McGeehan, and representatives from Clean Air Council, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), Physicians for Social Responsibility, the American Thoracic Society, Clean Water Action, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment in Pennsylvania, Group Against Smog Pollution, the Citizens Environmental Coalition of New York, the National Parks Conservation Association, Clean Air Watch, and the South Bronx Environmental Health & Policy Study. There were also many citizens and physicians from across the region that testified in favor of stronger fine particle standards.

“Soot pollution poses a serious threat to southeastern Pennsylvania,” said U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz, who planned to submit written comments to the EPA. “The EPA and the Bush administration need to return to the drawing board and craft air pollution standards that protect air quality and public health.”

“The Bush administration’s decision to reject the recommendations of its own science advisors on this issue makes for bad policy at any level—but it is inexcusable given the potential public health impacts of this decision,” said Pennsylvania state Rep. Michael McGeehan, who also submitted testimony.

“EPA's weak proposal not only spits in the face of science, it will lead to needless asthma attacks, heart attacks and fatalities in the greater Philadelphia region,” said Joseph Otis Minott, Esq., executive director of Clean Air Council, an environmental organization based in Pennsylvania.

“Pennsylvania has enormous cultural diversity—sparse rural villages to large urban centers—and equally diverse natural resources. Pennsylvania both creates and receives severe air pollution throughout all of those diverse communities and EPA has walked away from protecting all our citizens by exempting mining and agricultural operations from this particulate matter control regulation; an action without previous precedent,” said Nancy Parks, the Pennsylvania Sierra Club's chairperson for clean air issues.

“The science is clear—by adopting more stringent standards, the EPA could prevent thousands of premature deaths each year, both in Pennsylvania and across the U.S.,” said Robert K. Musil, Ph.D. M.P.H., Executive Director and CEO of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The particle pollution standards being proposed are simply inadequate to protect public health and must be significantly strengthened.”

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must set air quality standards at levels that protect public health, including sensitive populations, with an adequate margin of safety. The agency must also review air quality standards every five years to ensure that they reflect the latest scientific knowledge and update the standards as needed.

The current fine particle standards, set in 1997, include an annual standard of 15 micrograms per cubic meter (15 μg/m3) and a daily standard of 65 μg/m3. The annual standard is based on how much fine particle pollution is safe to breathe on a regular basis, while the daily standard is based on how much fine particle pollution is safe to breathe on any single given day. Notably, the EPA’s own risk assessment shows that the current standards protect only 56 million people—leaving hundreds of millions of Americans breathing unsafe levels of particle pollution.

In 2005, following an extensive scientific review, both the Bush administration’s independent science advisors and the EPA’s staff scientists concluded that the current fine particle standards are too weak to protect public health. As a result, they recommended strengthening the standards. More than 2,000 peer-reviewed studies since 1996 have confirmed the damaging health effects of exposure to fine particles and many have shown adverse effects even at levels well below the current standards.

In December, the Bush administration rejected the recommendations of its advisors and staff scientists. Specifically, the administration rejected lowering the annual standard and proposed only a limited reduction in the daily standard—from 65 μg/m3 to 35 μg/m3—that many health advocates say would have only a marginal impact on public health. It is unprecedented for an administration to disregard the recommendations of the independent Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. Reports show that the White House made dozens of changes to EPA’s draft rule before it was made public. Many of the changes softened or removed entirely assertions of harm from pollution. For instance, the White House removed a sentence stating that the air quality rules “may have a substantial impact on the life expectancy of the U.S. population.”

The electric power industry and other influential interests that would be affected by stronger fine particle standards and other pollution controls have lobbied heavily against further limits on pollution. By contrast, the medical and public health communities have endorsed the strongest standards recommended by the EPA’s staff scientists: 12 μg/m3 for the annual standard and 25 μg/m3 for the daily standard.

Air quality standards are the foundation for reducing air pollution nationwide, making the administration’s decision one of the most important it will face on air pollution.