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EPA Sneaks 'Costliest Regulation Ever' Over Holidays
By:MICHAEL BASTASCH
While millions of Americans were getting ready to
celebrate Thanksgiving, the Environmental Protection
Agency unveiled stricter standards for ozone, or smog,
levels — a rule that has been criticized as possibly the
costliest the agency has ever promulgated.
“Yet again we’re seeing the Obama administration release
an incredibly expensive regulation on the eve of a major
national holiday,” said Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa
Murkowski. “The administration is clearly hoping to
release this at a time when the vast majority of
Americans are focused elsewhere, and that alone should
tell us something about it.”
The EPA’s proposed standard lowers the acceptable amount
of ozone in the air from 75 parts per billion to a range
of 65-70 parts per billion. The agency says this new
standard is based on more than 1,000 scientific studies
published since 2008, and will prevent from 320,000 to
960,000 asthma attacks per year, along with “preventing
more than 750 to 4,300 premature deaths; 1,400 to 4,300
asthma-related emergency room visits; and 65,000 to
180,000 missed workdays.”
“Bringing ozone pollution standards in line with the
latest science will clean up our air, improve access to
crucial air quality information, and protect those most
at-risk. It empowers the American people with updated
air quality information to protect our loved ones —
because whether we work or play outdoors — we deserve to
know the air we breathe is safe,” EPA Administrator Gina
McCarthy said in a statement.
The EPA said it would take comments from stakeholders on
setting an even lower smog standard of 60 parts per
billion — a level that industry groups have said would
cost the economy $3.4 trillion by 2040.
A standard set at 60 parts per billion would also mean
that large swaths of the U.S. would be labelled as out
of compliance, possibly heralding more EPA intervention
into state environmental plans.
A wide range of industry groups and Republicans have
said the new ozone rule could be the most “expensive
ever imposed” on American industry.
“This new ozone regulation threatens to be the most
expensive ever imposed on industry in America and could
jeopardize recent progress in manufacturing by placing
massive new costs on manufacturers and closing off
counties and states to new business by blocking projects
at the permitting stage,” Jay Timmons, president of the
National Association of Manufacturers, said in a
statement.
“What’s worse is that this is just the latest in a long
line of environmental regulations that have come off of
EPA’s regulatory conveyor belt in recent months. Many of
these rules are being imposed with little concern or
attention to their costs for families and businesses,”
Murkowski said. “With regard to ozone, in particular,
the projected health benefits are heavily speculative at
best, notwithstanding their high costs to achieve.”
Environmentalists welcomed the EPA’s ozone rule, but
urged the agency to set the smog standard even lower at
60 parts per billion (ppb) when the rule is in finalized
in October 2015.
“Choosing to lower the standard from 75 ppb is a
tremendous step toward putting the health of children
above polluters and we hope the EPA takes another one
and places the final standard at 60 ppb come October of
2015,” said Barbara VanHanken, chairwoman of the Sierra
Club’s Oklahoma chapter.
Ground-level ozone, or smog, forms when nitrogen dioxide
and volatile organic compounds mix together in the hot
sun. Emissions from power plants, vehicles and
manufacturing facilities can contribute to ozone
build-up, but it can also occur naturally from things
like plants and fires. The EPA says that ozone can
aggravate asthma and lung diseases, and has been linked
to premature death from heart and lung problems.
But critics say the science behind the health effects of
ozone is far from settled. EPA documents obtained by
the blog
JunkScience.com through a Freedom of Information Act
request show that in 2007, the EPA exposed asthmatic
people to high levels of ozone. The EPA claimed in the
2007 study that no human subject has ever suffered from
any observed “adverse event” during an experiment.
“Did any of the exercising asthmatic human guinea pigs
experience any adverse health effect whatsoever from
these high exposures to ozone?” JunkScience.com asks.
“No.”
“EPA has failed to disclose that its own careful
controlled clinical experiments of exercising asthmatics
exposed to exceedingly high levels of ozone experienced
no adverse health effects whatsoever,” the blog
continues. “And now EPA wants to impose what will be the
single most costly regulation of all time on the
American economy.”
More recent human
studies conducted by the EPA in 2010 and 2011
exposed people to high levels of particulate matter,
diesel exhaust and ozone. No subject died during the
tests, but one test subject developed a persistent cough
after being exposed to high levels of ozone for 15
minutes in April 2011.
Ozone levels have plummeted 33 percent since 1980,
according to EPA data.
Read More: DailyCaller.com
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