EPA Proposes Tougher Limits on Soot, Smog

Fueling a fervent debate on Capitol Hill and in corporate boardrooms, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday unveiled a far-reaching proposal to strengthen standards aimed at protecting over 130 million Americans from health dangers posed by urban smog and tiny airborne particles.

Pressured by powerful industries and Republican leaders in Congress on one side and environmental and health advocates on the other, EPA Administrator Carol Browner recommended pollution limits in the middle of the range endorsed by her staff and scientific advisors.

As proposed, the new national health standards for ozone and particulates--often called smog and soot--expand the reach of clean air measures to about half of all Americans, encompassing three times as many counties as before. The long-awaited proposal would establish the first new air quality standards in a decade.

In pollution-plagued California especially, the tougher standards would trigger an even more vigorous push for creating highly advanced technologies to clean up emissions from cars, trucks, airplanes and other equipment and consumer products.

The proposal would annually prevent 20,000 premature deaths among people suffering respiratory and heart diseases, a quarter of a million asthma attacks, and 1.5 million people from losing lung capacity when outdoors, according to an EPA review of several hundred scientific studies.

“This rule would provide a new measure of protection for the millions of Americans that science now shows are breathing unhealthful air, particularly the children who are most at risk,” Browner said.

The EPA will seek public comments on its proposal for two months before implementing final standards in June.

More than three years in the making, it is the most significant environmental policy to come out of the Clinton administration, and the impact is already reverberating from coast to coast and shaping a divisive political battle.

Hundreds of major corporations and business groups, led by the nation’s oil and auto industries, contend that the new health limits are unjustified, impractical and would add tens of billions of dollars a year to an already immense bill for smog control.

Some Republican Congress members and governors have warned that they will not only try to block the EPA from implementing the new proposal but will mount campaigns to overhaul the Clean Air Act, which gives the EPA sole authority to set air pollution standards.

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Under the proposed limits, more than 300 counties--inhabited by about 60 million people--that previously had not been identified as soot or smog problem areas will have to begin restricting sources such as cars and factory smokestacks. Working with the EPA, the communities would have to develop such options as cleaner-burning gasoline, ride-share programs, smog checks for cars and controls on refineries and power plants.

And for about 130 areas already battling the pollutants--especially the four-county Los Angeles Basin, New York City, Houston and Chicago--the new requirements will make the challenge more daunting.

By shifting the focus to ultra-fine particles for the first time, the new particulate standard is likely to mean the phaseout of diesel fuel, which powers millions of trucks, buses, generators and other pieces of machinery.

“We think it means the end of diesel,” said Joel Anderson, executive vice president of the California Trucking Assn. “If there is a health issue involved, we feel we are compelled to move off it as a fuel. We don’t want to be blamed for killing people. But at this time, there is nothing for us to move to. We’re talking about a ubiquitous fuel that runs everything in the United States.”

Federal law requires the EPA to review the standards every five years, and when setting them, consider only health data, not economic issues. Sued by the American Lung Assn. in 1991, the EPA was ordered by a federal court to complete its review by Friday.

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A growing body of scientific research indicates that the existing standards are too weak to safeguard the public from microscopic particles that penetrate deep into lungs and can cause deadly exacerbations of lung and cardiac illnesses. An estimated 60,000 Americans die annually from particulates, according to a recent study based on Harvard Medical School data.

Also, medical studies show that the old standard for ozone allows concentrations that can cause temporary losses of lung capacity in children, increased hospitalizations from respiratory ailments and shortness of breath and chest pain in healthy adults exerting themselves outdoors.

Browner said the recommendation was made after “the most extensive scientific review in EPA history.” But some industries, especially oil companies, are challenging the science that drove the EPA’s decision, saying the health risks at the lower levels are unproven.

“It is clear to us that the ozone standard doesn’t need to be changed--no ifs, ands or buts. The effects that are typically seen are very short-term and very reversible and people exposed to ozone actually adapt to it,” said Paul Bailey, director of health and environmental affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, representing oil companies. “For particulates, the science is not good enough to reach any conclusion yet on a new standard.”

Gerald Esper, vehicle environmental director for an association representing General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, downplayed the threat of particulates, saying the deaths are of elderly people and others with severe diseases who would have died within days anyway.

Environmental and health advocacy groups were generally pleased with the EPA’s proposal.

“Despite a multimillion-dollar lobbying and disinformation campaign by big polluting industries, health science has prevailed,” said American Lung Assn. President Thomas F. Gibson.

Among the 229 areas expected to be newly designated as having unhealthful ozone pollution are the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver, Detroit, St. Louis, Louisville, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Bergen County, N.J., New Orleans, Nashville, Tenn., and Syracuse, N.Y.

An even bigger impact would come with the new limit for particles measuring under 2.5 microns--a fraction of the diameter of a human hair. Expanding the focus from larger particles such as dust to ultra-fine particles would prompt a crackdown on sources of fuel combustion, such as vehicle exhaust, wood smoke and sulfur from refineries, power plants and smelters.

Until now, most of the 41 counties violating the particle limit have been in the West, especially California, Colorado and Utah. But under the new limits, that list could grow by 126 counties to encompass Chicago, Cincinnati, Des Moines, Detroit, Houston and New York City, among others, according to preliminary EPA estimates.

Still suffering the worst smog and soot despite two decades of steady improvement, the Los Angeles Basin faces the greatest burden by far. The air around Riverside soars to fine-particle levels 2 1/2 times greater than the new limits, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Less than two weeks ago, the AQMD board adopted a new smog plan that intends to add 55 proposed measures to several hundred rules enacted since the 1940s. But even if the entire plan is implemented, the region would still exceed the fine-particle limit about 35%, said AQMD Executive Officer James Lents.

“The real brunt of the blow from these standards is what we are going to do with cars and trucks and airplanes and ships and trains. That’s where the rubber is going to meet the road, literally,” Lents said.

Wilson administration officials said some tightening of the health standards is justified, but they are concerned about the proposal for fine particles. Lents said the AQMD is likely to urge the EPA or Congress to delay the deadlines for when they must comply by several years.

“We know enough to know that the standards should be tighter, but we don’t have any idea, especially for fine particulates, how we’re going to get there,” said attorney Robert Wyman, who represents Los Angeles-area oil refineries and aerospace plants and serves on an EPA panel deciding how to implement the standards.

In the Bay Area, complying with the new ozone standard would cost about $45 million annually, while Chicago would have to impose an additional $2.5 billion to $7 billion in annual smog controls, according to an estimate from the American Petroleum Institute.

Browner said reaching the standards in most counties will not mean draconian measures. She vowed to work “state by state, city by city, industry by industry” to find “common sense, cost-effective steps.”

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Smog and Soot Standards

Under the EPA’s proposal to tighten national standards for ozone and particulates, the Los Angeles Basin would be even further from achieving its elusive clean-air goal. Ozone is the main ingredient of smog; particulates are fine pieces of soot and other substances that can lodge in lungs.

Ozone

Existing Standard

0.12 parts per million in a single hour.

New Standard

0.08 ppm averaged over 8 hours.

L.A. Basin

Current 8-hour average is 0.16 ppm, reached in San Bernardino area.

Particulates

Existing Standard

Particles measuring under 10 microns cannot exceed 150 micrograms per cubic liter of air in a day or 50 micrograms on an annual average.

New Standard

Fine particles (under 2.5 microns) cannot exceed 50 micrograms in a day or an average of 15 micrograms annually. Standards for coarse particles (under 10 microns) will be the same.

L.A. Basin

The region’s current peak is 103 micrograms in a day and an average of 36 annually, reached in the Riverside area.

Source: The EPA and AQMD