Recently, the EPA announced some new ozone standards, lowering the allowable amount of ozone pollution from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion. That doesn’t sound like a lot, and indeed the EPA’s scientists recommended a much tougher ozone standard – from 60 to 70 parts per billion:
Nearly a year ago, EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee reiterated in writing that its members were “unanimous in recommending” that the agency set the standard no higher than 70 parts per billion (ppb) and to consider a limit as low as 60 ppb. EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee and public health advocates lobbied for the 60-ppb limit because children are more vulnerable to air pollution.
EPA and other scientists have shown that ozone has a direct impact on rates of heart and respiratory disease and resulting premature deaths. The agency calculates that the new standard of 75 ppb would prevent 1,300 to 3,500 premature deaths a year, whereas 65 ppb would avoid 3,000 to 9,200 deaths annually.
There’s a bit of a scandal here, since the Bush administration forced the EPA to go against its own science and issue less strict ozone standards.
So the new standard is too lax and fails to adequately protect public health. But it’s better than nothing, right? Maybe. If you’re a lobbyist for the chemical manufacturing industry, you might think that even the old 80 parts per billion standard was too restrictive.
“The available science is largely unchanged since the 1997 standard was issued and demonstrates that there is no clear and substantial basis for making the standard stricter at this time,” [the American Chemistry Council] said in a statement. Lowering the ozone standard “unnecessarily will impose significant new burdens on states and others even as they continue to try and comply with the 1997 standard.”
It all depends on your point of view.