The changes could cost industry $90 billion, and substantially improve Americans' health
Posted 01.07.2010 at 6:55 pm
3 Comments
Smog
Nagyman
In a move to curb smog, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed the tightest regulations ever on ground-ozone-causing emissions. The new standards would replace 2008 ozone regulations implemented by the Bush administration that allowed so much smog emission that environmental advocates took the EPA to court, arguing that the weak emissions regulation didn't actually protect people's health.
The new standards would limit the amount of ozone a person could be exposed to in a given area, over eight hours, to between 0.060 and 0.070 parts per million. The Bush administration EPA pegged that number at 0.075 parts per million.
The EPA also wants a secondary standard that would vary by season, in an effort to protect trees and plants from the damaging effects of ozone. In the summer, ozone levels rise, and ozone clouds drift out of cities and into more heavily wooded areas.
Naturally, this new standard has set up the usual confrontation between business that emit a lot of ozone, who argue that the new standards would be mostly ineffective and impose expensive costs that would eventually get passed on to the consumer, and environmental groups, who claim that the reducing health care costs resulting from ozone exposure will offset the price of the new regulations.
It's always the same fight between those two, and I'm beginning to think that they doth protest too much. Geez, oil industry and Greenpeace, get a room.
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Since Nixon created the EPA, we've seen our water and air become a whole lot cleaner. How much cleaner we can realistically make it without reducing industry and jobs is the big question. Greenpeace favors personal aesthetics over industry and jobs. Industry sees it differently.
Prior to the Bush-era ozone regulations, smog and ozone had decreased significantly in major U.S. cities over the last 20 years and continues to decrease. Just like proposed CO2 restrictions the stricter ozone regulation seems extravagant and will have significant unintended consequences. The good news is it will probably reduce pollution further. The bad news is it will also reduce jobs and industries and move them overseas.
Given that ozone pollution was already decreasing and we still have healthy forests and parks, the secondary ozone proposal to "protect trees and plants" seems like a regulation in search of a reason. If it was worse 20 years ago and the plants survived the trauma, why do we need a law to protect the plants now when ozone levels are lower and declining?
Laurenra, the ozone restrictions are aimed more at people with asthma and other common respiratory ailments, and not simply at piling on to existing regulations, which are generally sufficient for trees and healthy human beings. Ozone levels in areas such as Los Angeles have definitely improved since the Nixon era, but some metropolitan areas, such as Baton Rouge, for example, have experienced increased ozone levels that do present a hazard to a significant portion of the population. It seems that many of us humans are less resilient than plants, and I would tend to side with regulations that help improve human health.
Interesting post.
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