Politicized Science Kills People

 

Underestimating the Benefits of Clean Air

By Erik Stokstad
ScienceNOW Daily News
27 September 2006

When officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that they were not tightening an air quality standard for soot, they cited scientific uncertainty (ScienceNOW, 21 September). Yet later that day, the agency quietly released a report in which outside experts agree that cleaning up soot would prevent substantial numbers of premature deaths. Environmentalists say the report will strengthen future lawsuits challenging the standard as too lax.

EPA has attracted controversy over its air quality standards for particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM 2.5). The agency proposed a new legal limit in December, which would reduce the average daily amount of soot and other particles allowed in the air. But the standard, which was finalized last week, kept the average annual amount at the existing standard of 15 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m³)--rather than lowering it to 13 to 14 µg/m³ as recommended by the agency's own scientific advisory committee (ScienceNOW, 21 December 2005).

The new report is an outgrowth of a recommendation in a 2002 study by the National Academies' National Research Council that EPA consult outside experts about scientific uncertainties. A panel of 12 experts reviewed more than 100 studies before concluding that strengthening the standard by 1 µg/m³ would decrease overall adult mortality by 0.7 to 1.6%.

"There was a pretty tight consensus," says Morton Lippmann of New York University School of Medicine (NYUSM), who participated in the review. Tightening the standard could prevent 10,000 to 12,000 deaths a year, says George Thurston, a NYUSM epidemiologist and another expert on the review.

"This is highly damning information contradicting the administrator's decision," says John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Jana Milford of Environmental Defense in Boulder, Colorado, says the document shows that EPA annual standard is "contrary to law, an abuse of discretion, and arbitrary and capricious." EPA says the expert review was supposed to be used for characterizing uncertainty not for setting the soot standard.

Related sites

EPA fact sheet on particulate matter

The new EPA standards

The Expert Review

 

WalterB - 20:58:48 - Wednesday, 09/27/2006