1st Time Ever - EPA Air Rules Will Not Follow Scientists' Recommendations

[hatrack]

Unbelievable.

However, EPA’s CASAC recommended <1.4MB PDF> a lower annual PM2.5 standard and didn’t specify any exemptions. This is the first time an EPA administrator has chosen not to completely follow CASAC’s advice, according to an agency official and others. “To my knowledge, this is the first time CASAC has ever felt the need to come back to the agency once we are at the proposed-standard stage,” the CASAC official says. Panel members held a teleconference meeting in February to discuss how to respond.

During the February phone call, Bart Ostro, chief of the California EPA’s Air Pollution Epidemiology Unit, who does not sit on CASAC, highlighted last-minute edits to the rules by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and others that he asserted “circumvent the entire peer-review process.” Ostro added, “Many of the statements overstate the uncertainty and misrepresent the scientific consensus.”

Deborah Shprentz, a consultant to the American Lung Association, testified that more than 100 leading air-quality scientists and physicians called on EPA in a December 2005 letter to propose substantially more protective PM standards. “Please stick to your guns,” she added. “Lowering the annual fine-particle standard as recommended by this committee is vitally important.”

Various industry groups argue against changing the standards at all, just as they did when EPA tightened the PM rules in 1997. “There are a lot of questions out there that haven’t been adequately addressed,” says Dan Riedinger, spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents electric utilities. “Any action at this time to further tighten the standard when we haven’t even begun complying with the current standard set in 1997 is premature.”

EDIT

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/mar/policy/kc_PMstandards.html

[Inland]

1. Well, we want to hear BOTH sides.

What the scientists say, and what the republican campaign contributors say.

[kitkatrose]

2. Of course, we're only going to listen to the contributers.

:eyes:

[Inland]

3. Yes, I meant "hear" scientists in the sense of

ignore and cover up and probably fire.