Air

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday he wants to radically revise how basic, health-based national air quality standards are set, giving more weight to the economic costs of achieving them and taking into account their impacts on energy development.

Under the law, the standards, setting uniform goals for breathable air, are supposed to be reviewed periodically asking only one question: whether they are protective enough to ensure the health of even the most vulnerable people, based on the best available science.

Further Reading: Low-Profile EPA Air Quality Shift Could Mean Big Changes

A foundational feature of the landmark Clean Air Act, the setting of these standards based on health, and not cost or feasibility, was defended adamantly on the Senate floor in 1970 by the bill’s main author, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, who declared: “That concept and that philosophy are behind every page of the proposed legislation.”

It has withstood legal and political tests for a generation.

Pruitt’s proposal would jettison it.

His approach, laid out in an agency memorandum, would fundamentally alter the process for how the government sets what are called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), which govern six especially widespread and noxious pollutants. The law requires the EPA to review these standards periodically. Pruitt’s memo says it will complete two reviews of levels set under President Barack Obama—for smog-forming ozone and sooty particulate matter—before President Donald Trump’s first term ends.…—Nicholas Kusnetz, “Scott Pruitt Plans to Radically Alter How Clean Air Standards Are Set,” InsideClimate News, 5/10/18