EPA Must Act to Limit Deadly Soot Air Pollution
Source: https://www.nrdc.org/bio/vijay-limaye/epa-must-act-limit-deadly-soot-air-pollution
Author: Vijay Limaye, John Walke
The Clean Air Act sets out legal limits for soot air pollution (and other major air pollutants) that are revisited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) every five years. As we learn more about the impacts of air pollution on our health, EPA can use that understanding to drive progress to clean up air pollution across the country. The major economic benefits of the Clean Air Act, including those for public health, are estimated to outweigh compliance costs by a factor of more than 30 to 1. The annual and daily limits for soot air pollution have not been strengthened since 2012. In the meantime, dozens of large, robust, and peer-reviewed epidemiology studies have been published that make one thing clear: Our current limits are not safe enough. That scientific consensus was confirmed by EPA in 2019 in its Integrated Science Assessment, which implicated soot air pollution in a whole host of dangerous health problems, including respiratory issues, cardiovascular problems, and nervous system effects. During the Trump administration, progress on cleaning up America’s air stalled. Despite overwhelming evidence that the 2012 soot limits were not adequately protective of public health, the Trump EPA left those limits in place in a rushed December 2020 decision. Because that action would have allowed for dangerous soot exposures to fester for another five years before any new look at the science, NRDC took action and filed a lawsuit against EPA on the last day of the Trump administration, demanding that the agency reconsider its flawed decision. In June 2021, the Biden EPA announced its plan to reopen the decision, setting the stage for this year’s proposal.