The Environmental Protection Agency is setting up a new standard for ozone in the air, in a sort of “wildcat” move, and its new hyper-strict standard is now under review at the Office of Management and Budget. It may be released any time between now and the 12th, and we need to inundate the White House with polite requests that this splendid piece of job-homicide be taken off the table for a couple more years—at least until we can achieve compliance on the existing standards.
I’ll back up: in 2008, EPA set an ozone standard of 75 ppb (parts per billion), which means that between Presidents Clinton and Bush, the reduction was 38% over a couple of decades, and indeed—while manufacturers push to meet the newest standards, progress has been steady and dramatic; the nationwide concentrations of ozone have declined by 30 percent since the 1980s.
Allergic people like me know this intuitively, because we can go into what were once smoggy valleys with unhealthful air trapped therein, and breathe freely. But a lot of areas are still working up to the new standard, which many localities haven’t yet met.
Federal guidelines require the EPA to revisit these ozone standards every five years, so another review will be due in 2013. Last year, however, EPA decided to reconsider, and proposed tightening it to somewhere in the range of 70 to 60 ppb. Why? Well, apparently because they can.
Let’s note right here that there are places where naturally occurring ozone levels exceed the proposed hyperaggressive standard&mdsh;including Yellowstone National Park. In fact, Howard Feldman—the API’s Director of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs—tells me that around 3000 out of the 3100 counties in the entire nation would likely be “in non-attainment,” or noncompliance, if the EPA goes forward with this plan. Is smog that widespread a problem across the country?
The EPA cannot explain how the average county would even be expected to meet these new requirements. How could they? We’re now at a point where instead of making sure industries don’t pollute the air, we’re asking local authorities to figure out how they can remove a naturally occurring gas.
Let’s also note here that manufacturers who cannot operate in this country—say, hypothetically, because their county officials are afraid of EPA overreach—will go to other nations, where very likely the environmental standards are lower than ours, in all kinds of ways. Will the EPA set up large screens at the entrance to the U.S.A., lest the wind blow ozone in from other nations where they are still allowed to manufacture things?
The Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI has done a study on the cost of compliance, and estimates that restricting the ozone down to the 60 ppb level could cost the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion per year between 2020 and 2030‐and destroy 7.3 million jobs.
The Boston Herald editorializes:
The current standard would be due for revision in 2013. The 2008 tightening did not go as far as an advisory committee recommended (to between 60 and 70 ppb); the agency claims it must act because the current standard “is not legally defensible.” We’re skeptical — every agency in Washington packs advisory panels with friendly reviewers.
There is no hurry. It’s a safe bet that controls based on the current standard have not become fully effective. (In Massachusetts, six of the eight current monitors in existence in 1998 show declines from then of 18 to 32 percent in peak readings; two registered 7 percent declines.)
By law, the EPA may not consider costs in setting concentration standards, but the agency estimates a 65 ppb standard (the midpoint of the recommended range; EPA has not disclosed its choice) would cost the economy between $52 billion and $90 billion. Those are believable estimates; costs of further control always mount as pollution declines.
Such costs are economically indefensible with unemployment above 9 percent. What we have is an agency acting out of wounded pride. If President Obama really cares about jobs, he will order the EPA to resume the normal review schedule.
There are moments, however, that it seems like rather a big if.
(This is not to be confused with the ozone layer that hovers above us and affects the sunlight we get; we’re talking about a gas that is part of ordinary air that we breathe, but can make breathing problems worse and should be limited. Concentrations are increased by many industries, so it’s certainly a good thing to keep an eye on.)
- Excited
- Angry
- Not as Angry
- Bored
- Indifferent
- Sad
“Why? Well, apparently because they can.”
Or because they estimate it will save the lives of 12,000 Americans every year.and save $100 billion in medical costs each year.
Do they get those numbers from the same people who make up all the global warming “statistics”, or does the EPA have it’s own trained chimpanzees poking random number generators?
Well, the notion that it would save lives was based on questionable assumptions, and even the EPA says that there would be no savings from these standards—the fact that they couldn’t even manufacture some is a pretty bad sign.
Come on…say it!
Respiratory illnesses are a hoax…
You bore me and give me headaches.
It’s not me…it’s your conscience.
It’s funny how things like CO2, plant food, which in turn produces Oxygen*, and Ozone**, which helps decrease the effects of harmful radiation from the sun, are now considered pollutants. Pretty soon, the EPA is going to regulate all manufacturers into taking their operations overseas and America will become a jobs desert.
* Oxygen, something all Humans are addicted to and need to survive.
** Remember the brouhaha over CFC’s because they were depleting the Ozone layer?
Well, it’s a different thing–the ozone that is part of smog, and all around us, can lead to particulate matter in the air. No one wants to be breathing in a bunch of dust.
Why don’t you just jump into the crazy with both feet and call respiratory illnesses a hoax?
Or be honest and admit you think poor Americans should be willing to die if it means some polluting executive can upgrade his private jet…
Why don’t you be honest and just admit that you want to force everyone to pay $2/KWH for electricity and have to walk everywhere so you can better control them?
Why do you want a billion or so people to starve to death? Why are you worried about some “polluting” executive’s jet but not AlGore’s?
Why don’t you quit sucking on the Kool-Aid for a while?
Just more wingnut spew, jeffy.
You’re like old faithful.
I’m excited to hear Ponce’s suggestions for how Yellowstone National Park is supposed to remove the natural ozone out of its air.
Ponce, my man! Thank you for confirming my belief in conspiracy theories. You are living proof of chemtrails, because you’ve bee driving under them and huffing them.
Actually, it’s kind of depressing, because I’ve dealt with intelligent trolls, and you aren’t even a patch on them. You can’t express a theory or a position that takes more than 50 words, and most of your expressions of position are totally dated by the time you espouse them.
Do you not check DU and the Huffpo for your daily talking points before you come here? You sure seem to be relying on yesterday’s, most of the time. Is your dial-up connection that slow?
Heh.
Stories from my grandparents, who lived in big-city environs in the ’30′s, ’40′s, tell of the train smoke from oil-burning engines smogging the downtown area so much that the sun would be obscured. We’ve cleaned up tremendously since then.
As long as mankind is allowed to industrialize, there will be pollution and ‘respiratory illnesses’. It’s a good thing to be industrialized and reliant (spoiled) by technology. I’d hate to have to go backwards just to please some lefty whack-jobs.
May the fucking LeftLibProggs who want to reverse our technological progress go straight to (thanks, Jonah!) Hell.
Go and tell it on the Mountain, Bro. There are way too many people who think that Green will be free, and they will still have their current lifestyle.
Idiots, all, but someone needs to wake them from their chemtrail induced slumber, I’m thinking.
Hey–I’m allergic to smog. But I’m allergic to real smog, rather than theoretical smog that turns out to be naturally occurring gases in the air.
If 3,000 out of 3,100 counties in this country can’t meet the standard, the standard is clearly unreasonably strict.
(Ponce will be along in another moment to talk about Mother Nature’s corporate jet . . . )
So the life expectancy is very high, even after relentless decades of inhaling soot, our God given lungs still outlast the heart, the brains blood vessels, the liver and kidneys, assuming the big C or dementia lets you off the hook. We’ve got clean air covered, but carbon dioxide is needed to prevent mass starvation, and the phony jurassic park computer models designed to create carbon traded mega-fortunes for the chosen few, should be atop the heap of genuine hate speech.
All the petty thug warlords down at the U.N. wanting
a cut of the carbon tax action, will be seeing a cut alright, as in budgetary. They never
cared about the starving masses before, and mass lies will get you mass graves.
Science fiction is spoken as gospel by everyone from the Supreme Court,
to the talking airheads of Team Obama News. Its time to replace the liars and con-artists and dupes, with honest citizens, in every level of American government.
Here’s where ponce got his figures: A press release from the National Resources Defense Fund(1) (http://www.nrdc.org/media/2010/101027.asp). From a brief online check, I can’t tell if they’re more or less likely to twist facts to serve their bias than Greenpeace, but since their press release says “Polluters and their allies are pushing heavily to block the standards” I think we can rest assured that they aren’t operating from an objective point of view.
What does objective mean? It means looking at cause-and-effect, examining the relative costs of different actions. It also means not demonizing one side or the other.
Tests with lab rats indicate that ozone might increase heart attack risk. For fellow biology buffs, increasing ozone concentrations boost the amount of inflammation people experience over time, as measured by levels of TNF-A (tumor necrosis factor alpha), which increases as inflammation increases and decreases as inflammation decreases. In other words, TNF-A is a good marker for whether a critter (human or rat) is currently suffering from higher levels of inflammation.(2,3)
Inflammation isn’t a good thing; it’s a fairly stressful condition for cells to be in. And in this case, the increase of TNF-A also seemed to correspond with decreased levels of a protein called Cav1 (Caveolin-1) which protects the heart by preventing cells from getting the signal to die. Cell death is a natural thing — when it doesn’t happen as it should, we call the condition “cancer” — but obviously having slightly more cell death in a heart that is already strained by, say, heart disease or hypertension might result in a few more heart attacks.(2,3)
Note that much of this is speculation. These tests were performed on rats who were breathing 0.8 ppm (or 800 parts per billion) of ozone. That’s more than ten times the current legal level, thrice Britain’s worst ozone level ever (260 ppb in London in July, 1976) and almost twice Mexico’s worst ozone level ever (404 ppb in 1991). (3,4,5.)
On the other hand, there is some evidence that higher ozone levels may exacerbate damage on hot days from heart disease or stroke. My guess is that when someone has a heart attack or stroke, they are in such a precarious situation that anything small — say, too-low Cav1 levels resulting from ozone in the air — can tip the balance. (6)
So where did the “12,000 deaths a year” figure come from? It’s hard to say. It’s possible that somebody read the above article (source #6) and multiplied the number of strokes in the USA every year (143,000 odd) by 8%, the worst-case increase in death as stated in the article. Or maybe they just picked some funny number out of a hat; since they won’t present a logic chain for us to analyze, we can’t know. (6, 7, 8 )
But it sounds an awful lot like someone looked at a couple speculative studies, and then took a guess as to how 80 ppb would affect mortality rates differently than 75 ppb or 70 ppb. There’s no clear link here, and I am reluctant to worsen our economy and kill more jobs without one. Our time would probably be better spent looking at ways to boost Cav1 in at-risk heart disease patients, or just putting out public service announcements letting people know the risk of going outside in the summer when it’s hot and ozone levels are higher than 100 ppb.
TL;DR: The science is out there, and does not support this “12,000 deaths prevented annually” figure.
Sources.
(1) Natural Resources Defense Fund press release. http://www.nrdc.org/media/2010/101027.asp
(2) USA Health news article. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/heart/articles/2010/07/22/can-ozone-cause-heart-attacks
(3) Science article. Enhanced death signaling in ozone-exposed ischemic-reperfused hearts. http://www.springerlink.com/content/70x63031577w4452/
(4) New Scientist article. “Stalled in a Haze of Ozone,” printed Nov. 20, 1986. Google Books has it for free viewing. The article is on page 18.
(5) Sociedad Quimica de Mexico article. “Recent Trend in Ozone Levels in the Metropolitan zone of Mexico City.” http://www.jmcs.org.mx/PDFS/V52/4/05-Javier%20Audry%20Sanchez.pdf
(6) ScienceDaily article. “Ozone Key to Link Between Heat and Increased Cardiovascular Death Risk.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071123194004.htm
(7) Stroke death statistics, USA. http://www.strokecenter.org/patients/stats.htm
(8) Heart disease death statistics, USA. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
Grr. The “happy face” was actually an 8 followed by a parenthesis. I’m indicating a source there, people, not snarking at the hattrick numbers.
I fixed that. That sunglasses dealio is one of the most annoying things about the internet–the fact that any numbered list with an “8″ in it has to be treated with kid gloves.