A rare showing of touching bipartisan agreement paid off late last week, when seven senators talked the Environmental Protection Agency into nixing new rules set at reducing ozone in cities.
And Missouri's own two senators deserve much of the credit. The EPA had faced an August deadline to make the changes, which have set new standards for acceptable urban air quality. But under pressure from the Smoggy Seven, including Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond, the Bush Era ozone rules will remain in place at least until October.
Long story short, ground-level ozone is formed when exhaust from cars is
hit by sunlight. The current acceptable level is 75 parts per
billion, and the EPA wants to slice that to between 60 and 70 ppb. Too much
exposure to ground-level ozone can lead to icky problems like asthma and
bronchitis, and according to the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, even
death.
States and activists sued the EPA during the Bush
administration in 2008 to get them to make 60-70 ppb the standard. But now
senators want everybody to relax, take a deep breath (but not too deep!), and look at the compelling reasons to not change the
rules. In a letter to the EPA earlier this month, they wrote:
"Given the absence of new or different scientific data, EPAThey areshould
maintain the current ozone standards. Moving to
change the standard again, outside of the Clean Air Act's normal
five-year review process, as local communities are struggling to meet
the existing standard, would be unfair and unwise."
right that there's probably not any "new or different scientific data"
on ozone and health problems, because EPA already reviewed 1,700
studies showing that 60-70 ppb would be a healthy level. Plus, they say, changing ozone levels will be expensive. Like, $19-$90 billion
expensive, which could never, never justify the $13-$100 billion in predicted
health benefits. As McCaskill says, that price tag would "compound the hardship that many are now facing in these difficult
economic times." We're in a recession, people. We don't have money to keep volatile organic compounds of nitrogen oxides out of your lungs.
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