Maryland has dirty air and it's going to stay dirty longer, thanks to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Once again, the Bush administration has chosen industry over science, and the public will pay the price. Shame on President Bush.
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson's decision last week to lower the pollution standard from 84 to 75 units of ozone for every billion units of air means improvements in air quality here will be slower than they should be. It was a judgment likely to save industry billions in pollution control investments but one with serious consequences for the health of thousands of Americans.
His decision conflicted with an independent EPA advisory group of scientists that said an ozone standard of 60 to 70 parts per billion is needed to provide an adequate margin of protection for people with respiratory problems.
Maryland has been making some progress in recent years in reducing unhealthy ozone from the air. But while counties have more days with cleaner air, many of them still fall short of current ozone standards.
The Bush administration has been dragging its feet for years as members of Congress, state officials and environmentalists have pushed for a more aggressive assault on air pollution. The EPA has refused to issue regulations on another pollutant, CO2, a greenhouse gas linked to global warming, despite a Supreme Court decision last April mandating that responsibility.
Last fall, the governors of seven Eastern states, including Maryland, expressed concerns about the ozone standard to the EPA. In a typical year, approximately 8,000 Maryland residents are hospitalized for asthma, and more than 32,000 are treated in emergency rooms for the condition, which is aggravated by the ozone in the air.
Despite those concerns, Mr. Johnson proposed last week that the 1970 Clean Air Act be amended to take industry costs into account when setting air quality standards - a step that would seriously undermine the law's fundamental purpose: to protect the public health.
In announcing the new ozone standard, Mr. Johnson noted that it could result in billions of dollars in new costs for industry. He neglected to mention the potential impact on health of not following the advice of the agency's scientists.
