The President's action today refuses to follow law and science by ordering EPA to not implement the new ozone standards. His own EPA head has said the current standard is "legally indefensible."
[I]t would have been illegal to set the standard outside the range that a board of expert scientists said was necessary to protect human health. It also would have led to more costs for cities and states, which wouldn't have known which standard to shoot for, she said.
"The legal defensibility of the 2008 decision posed major challenges for the federal government given the strength of the scientific record at that time," as well as the letter of the Clean Air Act and the recommendations of scientific advisers. "I decided that reconsideration was the appropriate path based on concerns that the 2008 standards were not legally defensible," she added.
Quoted by David Nir, Daily Kos
The American Lung Association will go to Court to force this President to obey the law.
“For two years the Administration dragged its feet by delaying its decision, unnecessarily putting lives at risk. Its final decision not to enact a more protective ozone health standard is jeopardizing the health of millions of Americans, which is inexcusable,” said Charles D. Connor, President and CEO of the American Lung Association. “The American Lung Association now intends to revive its participation in litigation with the Administration, which was suspended following numerous assurances that the Administration was going to complete this reconsideration and obey the law. We had gone to court because the Bush Administration failed to follow the law and set a protective health standard.”
The EPA’s nearly two-year-long “reconsideration” of the ozone standard determined that the 2008 standard, set at 75 ppb by the Bush Administration, failed to protect public health, failed to follow the scientific community’s recommendations, and was legally indefensible. Furthermore, in reconsidering the 2008 decision, EPA had to limit its review to reconsider the science about ozone as it stood in 2006. Evidence accumulating since 2006 shows that ozone is harmful at levels well below the current.
By choosing to ignore the recommendations of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), the President is failing to follow the nation’s landmark air pollution law, the Clean Air Act, and therefore failing to protect public health, particularly those most at risk including children, older people, and people who suffer from chronic lung diseases. For these people, breathing smog-polluted air can lead to coughing and wheezing, restricted airways, hospitalization and even death. Even healthy young adults and people who exercise or work outdoors can suffer from high levels of ozone pollution.
“A new smog standard would have saved lives and resulted in fewer people getting sick,” said Albert A. Rizzo, MD, National Volunteer Chair of the American Lung Association and pulmonary and critical care physician in Newark, Delaware. “The Administration should have set a standard at 60 ppb as advised by the American Lung Association and other medical societies and health groups. Its failure to do so will severely jeopardize public health,” continued Dr. Rizzo.
American Lung Association
This President chose Business Profits over Public Health.
Business group representatives had met Aug. 16 with White House Chief of State William Daley to push their case for scrapping the ozone changes. They said the costs would be much greater than the administration estimated.
“The signal today was that message is being heard” by the White House, Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, said in an interview. “These are the kinds of signals that the economy and business needs to begin pulling money of the sidelines and start investing
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
Lobbyists won today. This President chose Lobbyists over Public Health.
Ozone kills. Really:
ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2008)
Short-term exposure to current levels of ozone in many areas is likely to contribute to premature deaths, says a new National Research Council report, which adds that the evidence is strong enough that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should include ozone-related mortality in health-benefit analyses related to future ozone standards. The committee that wrote the report was not asked to consider how evidence has been used by EPA to set ozone standards, including the new public health standard set by the agency in March.
Ozone, a key component of smog, can cause respiratory problems and other health effects. In addition, evidence of a relationship between short-term -- less than 24 hours -- exposure to ozone and mortality has been mounting, but interpretations of the evidence have differed, prompting EPA to request the Research Council report. In particular, the agency asked the committee to analyze the ozone-mortality link and assess methods for assigning a monetary value to lives saved for the health-benefits assessments.
Based on a review of recent research, the committee found that deaths related to ozone exposure are more likely among individuals with pre-existing diseases and other factors that could increase their susceptibility. However, premature deaths are not limited to people who are already within a few days of dying.
In addition, the committee examined research based on large population groups to find how changes in ozone air concentration could affect mortality, specifically to determine the existence of a threshold -- a concentration of ozone below which exposure poses no risk of death. The committee concluded that if a threshold exists, it is probably at a concentration below the current public health standard. As people have individual susceptibilities to ozone exposure, not everyone may experience an altered risk of death if ozone air concentration also changes. Further research should explore how personal thresholds may vary and the extent to which they depend on a person's frailty, the committee said.
The research on short-term exposure does not account for all ozone-related mortality, and the estimated risk of death may be greater than if based solely on these studies, the committee noted. To better understand all the possible connections between ozone and mortality, future research should address whether exposure for more than 24 hours and long-term exposure -- weeks to years -- are associated with mortality, including how ozone exposure could impact life expectancy. For example, deaths related to short-term exposure may not occur until several days afterward or may be associated with multiple short-term exposures.
http://environment.about.com/...
More people will die and many more will get sick because this President chose not to obey the law.
So the Courts will have to intervene.
I am so disappointed and angry with this President's decision today. We must fight all such decisions with all we have. No rhetoric can change the real action taken.