Do Americans breathe reasonably clean air? Or are smog and soot levels high enough in some areas to justify tougher controls on refineries and the fuels they produce? The debate rages on.
An Apr. 29 American Lung Association report found particulate (soot) levels endanger one quarter of the US population; low-level ozone (smog) compromises half the country.
Small children and the elderly are the most vulnerable to elevated pollution, ALA said.
Health crisis
The group used the same data state and local agencies give to the US Environmental Protection Agency. ALA said its findings reinforce the need for the public and policymakers to respond quickly to a public health crisis. Motorists can help clean the air by carpooling and filling gas tanks after sundown. Regulators can make a difference by doing a better job enforcing the Clean Air Act.
Policymakers also should embrace clean fuel formulations to reduce air pollution in urban centers where smog and soot levels remain persistently above federal standards, ALA said.
ALA is aligned with environmentalists, consumer groups, and local air regulators that charge the White House is not serious about enforcing existing rules; they say President George W. Bush instead wants to weaken clean air regulations. Industry agrees with the administration position that more flexible rules will encourage investments that result in cleaner electric power plants and refineries.
EPA role
ALA's report came soon after EPA, to comply with a longstanding court order, issued tougher local ozone designations. The agency also established deadlines that state and counties must meet to reduce ozone levels.
Once designations and classifications take effect June 15, states and communities must prepare a plan to reduce ground-level ozone.
According to EPA, 31 states have locations that fail acceptable smog levels. Part or all of 474 counties nationwide are in "nonattainment" for either failing to meet the 8-hr ozone standard or for causing a downwind county to fail.
EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said that the new ozone designations do not represent failure. "This isn't about the air getting dirtier," he said. "The air is getting cleaner. These new rules are about our new understanding of health threats; about our standards getting tougher and our national resolve to meet them."
He said that most counties—2,668 in all—meet the new standards.
The American Enterprise Institute, an industry-supported think tank, took Leavitt's clean air message a step further. AEI analysts argued that air pollution concerns are generally overblown.
"Air pollution has improved far more, and, at current levels, poses far less of a health threat than activists and regulators have led the public to believe. Also contrary to the conventional wisdom, air pollution will continue to improve, even without any new regulations. Most of the pollution reductions required by existing laws and regulations have not yet come to fruition, ensuring continued improvements for years to come."
