Protecting the Nation from Air Pollution
It’s hard to remember now what the air was like in the 1960s. Pollution streamed from factories and cars; heavy clouds of smog settled over many American cities. Office workers tell stories of taking an extra white shirt to work to replace the one they wore that grew dirty from soot during the day. In New York City as late as 1966, over 150 people died following a Thanksgiving “killer fog,” felled simply by breathing the city’s noxious air.1
That smoggy scene began to change with the passage of a landmark public health law, the 1970 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. Prior laws, including the original Clean Air Act passed in 1967, had not been strong enough or comprehensive enough to get polluters to clean up the air pollution sources that affected communities everywhere. Reinforced with critical amendments in 1977 and 1990, the Clean Air Act has proven to be a powerful and effective tool to reduce pollution.
Thanks to this law, we began to clean up factories, cars and gasoline. Polluters could no longer dump toxic clouds into the air; they had to make sure the air coming out of their plants met national standards, based on their impact on public health. Car makers developed cleaner cars that could run without streaming uncontrolled, noxious fumes down the highways. The skies that once darkened daily with smog and soot now were cleaner in much of the nation.2 Widespread problems, like airborne lead, have virtually vanished; they are now limited to tiny pockets around specific sources. Thanks to the Clean Air Act provisions requiring a regular, thorough review of the current research and healthbased standards, emerging threats, like fine particle pollution, can now be better targeted for clean up.
The Act has not only been effective in reducing pollution, it has been cost-effective as well. The Act itself requires that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) periodically review and report on the effectiveness of the law, including the costs and benefits of implementation.3 When EPA finished its review of the first 20 years of Clean Air Act implementation in 1999, the Agency calculated that the public health and environmental benefits were 42 times greater than the costs.4 The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also annually reviews these costs and benefits. In its two most recent reports, OMB found that the benefits of enforcement of the nation’s clean air laws from 1992 to 2003 greatly exceeded the costs.5 Last year, the National Research Council declared: “Cost-benefit analyses have generally concluded that the economic value of the benefits to public health and welfare have equaled or exceeded the cost of implementation.”6
The “Endangered” Clean Air Act: Public Health at Risk
Today some of the biggest polluters are trying to get away with not having to clean up. And the Administration and some in Congress, who should be protecting public health, favor letting polluters get away with it.
-
In 2003, EPA attempted to reverse a provision in the Clean Air Act that would have required 17,000 of the nation’s oldest, dirtiest power plants, oil refineries and other industrial facilities to meet the same emission standards as newly built ones when they are rehabilitated or modernized.
|
Today some of the
biggest polluters are trying to get away with not having to clean up.
En la actualidad,
algunos de los responsables
más grandes por la contaminación
están tratando de zafarse de su obligación de
limpiarla. |
-
In 2004, the Administration prevented EPA from using the authority the Act already gives it that would have made greater progress cleaning up these power plants.
-
The Administration and some members of Congress are proposing new laws that would roll back existing requirements of the Act and allow more pollution, lasting over a longer period of time, than the current Act would permit.
To learn about what this means to you, read on.
The Problem with Power Plants
Old coal-fired power plants are among the biggest industrial polluters, especially in the eastern half of United States. The toll of death, disease and environmental destruction caused by coal-fired power plant pollution continues to mount. A new analysis released in 2004 attributed 24,000 premature deaths each year to power plant pollution. In addition, the research estimates over 550,000 asthma attacks, 38,000 heart attacks and 12,000 hospital admissions are caused annually by power plant pollution.7
The Lung Association
sued EPA to block
new rules giving huge loopholes to polluters. |
| Este informe le puede ayudar a comprender cómo es el aire en el condado donde vive. | EPA has the authority to clean up these plants under the Clean Air Act, using tools the Agency has used with other industries. Unfortunately, since 2003 EPA has instead tried to open up huge loopholes for these big polluters. These same polluters are now pushing the Administration and some in Congress to permanently roll back the rules to give them a special break, a break that will cost lives and health.
Protecting the Nation form Air Pollution continued... |
