ozone grd level VOC's

see also ozone/cfc (hole?)

new 6/15 seems to be some kind of death match, maybe around coal/clean power plan

alford (kovacs? coco) roadshow

note ground level is quite distinct from old/won cfc stratosphere ozone hole, which is healing b/c of gop originated Montreal protocol?

milloy started junk sci meme; secret sci has not caught on, but he keeps flogging cf epa holocaust bs

===

---

AN 8 25 right after Flood got reamed in neb?

Comments from climate change denier Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) went badly at a recent town hall in rural Pinedale.

WyoFile reports the community of Pinedale suffered alarming ozone spikes in the late 2000s, with one measurement surpassing that of Los Angeles. Residents — particularly those with preexisting respiratory conditions and asthma — had to avoid outdoor exercise on high-ozone days. WyoFile reports a doctor even advised one mother to drive her hypoxic newborn to a safer place 78 miles away from home.

So when Hageman appeared at a town hall and announced her support for “repealing” a landmark 2009 doctrine classifying greenhouse gases as pollutants and legally binding federal agencies to regulate them, attendees shouted her down.

“The endangerment finding is absolutely based upon false science,” Hageman said, prompting a chorus of boos from the July 29 crowd along with guffaws and several loud shouts of “No!”

IFrame Content

WyoFile reports Hageman tried to continue over the outburst: “CO2 [carbon dioxide] is not a pollutant. As far as the validity and the science that was the foundation for that, they cooked the books.”

But Sublette County constituents weren’t having it, reports WyoFile: “The booing continued, along with one person shouting, ‘Lie! Lie!’ as Hageman pressed on.”

Environmental Defense Fund Legislative Manager John Rutecki told WyoFile that “Wyoming didn’t get cleaner by accident,” referring to efforts to reduce ozone-inducing pollutants in Pinedale’s Upper Green River Basin. “It took years of effort by the Pinedale community and so many others.”

The “non-attainment” status issued by the EPA, which Hageman opposes, forced Wyoming air quality regulators to impose healthier standards on fossil fuel drillers, and eventually the companies themselves got onboard.

Pinedale resident Mary Lynn Worl, who attended Hegeman’s town hall, told WyoFile that her state isn’t likely to weaken federal emission rules after recent successes.

“We were never against drilling and development,” said Worl. “We wanted it done right. We wanted it to be done as safely as possible.

Read the full WyoFile report at this link.

---

https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/fueling-dissent/

no lnx many? twt

FUELING DISSENT

How the oil industry set out to undercut clean air

After casting doubt on climate change for decades, industry consultants have turned their attention to air pollution

Illustration by Robert Fresson

by Jie Jenny Zou

Tom Dart of Guardian US contributed reporting

December 12, 2017

SAN ANTONIO, Texas ― On sunny days, when his classmates at St. John Bosco Elementary School run out to play, Gabriel Rosales heads to the school nurse for a dose of Albuterol. The fine mist opens his airways, relaxing the muscles in his chest. Without it, recess could leave the 9-year-old gasping for breath. He gets a second dose at the end of the day before heading home.

Over the past year, Gabriel’sasthma has worsened. Visits to the emergency room, shortened trips to the park, and reliance on inhalers have become his new norm. “It got to the point where I couldn’t even leave him with anybody,” said his father, Gabe, who works as a consultant to the National Association of Public Employees, a workers’ advocacy group, and a seasonal field director of the Bexar County Democratic Party. “One time he almost looked blue.”

Gabriel’s health is deteriorating alongside air quality in San Antonio, where oil and gas development, a hotter climate and a growing population have combined to spell misery for a city that once boasted clean air compared to other Texas metropolitan areas. Part of the problem lies southeast of the city in the Eagle Ford Shale, a 400-mile-long hub of hydraulic fracturing that unleashes microscopic particles and smog-causing,ground-level ozone.

The state’s environmental regulator — the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — hasn’t made things better.In fact, it’s followed in the footsteps of Big Oil’s biggest lobby, theAmerican Petroleum Institute,which has forestalled progress onozone for decades. Using consultants also hired byAPI,the commission has spent millions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to undercut scientific evidence linking particulate matter and ozone with bronchitis, asthma and premature death.

Read more about API's history of climate denial and its ties to the White House ]

Air quality is the new frontier for climate-change skeptics long tied to API. The institute has fueled uncertainty on climate by producing what critics call misleading scientific and economic studies. Now, by attempting to discredit established research on ozone and fine particles, API and its cadre of doubters are trying to undermine the Clean Air Act — the landmark U.S. law credited with saving millions of lives. Working in concert with other free-market groups, they’re taking their message to Capitol Hill. API officials did not grant interview requests from the Center for Public Integrity.

Residents of San Antonio’s low-income, mostly Latino neighborhoods — like Hillcrest, where Gabriel Rosales lives — bear the brunt of poor air quality even if they aren’t in ozone hot spots, said Mario Bravo, an outreach specialist with the Environmental Defense Fund. “They have less access to health care,” Bravo said. “They have less access to transportation to get to the health-care providers.”

‘A lot like climate’

In June, two peer-reviewed studies trumpeted a conclusion at odds with years of solid science: fine-particle pollution long linked to premature death and chronic illness isn’t as dangerous as health advocates contend. If true, the findings would call into question health benefits claimed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has set ever-tightening air-quality standards.

There was a catch, however. The articles — which were published within a week of one another — appeared in Critical Reviews in Toxicology and Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, two journals favored by industry consultants alleged to promote pay-for-play science.And both studies were funded by API, a trade group that has spent $40 million since 2013 to lobby Congress on topics ranging from taxes to global warming.

Twitter

“Our study is published...air quality does not kill. $600 million of EPA junk science up in smoke,” climate-change skeptic and Donald Trump acolyte Steve Milloy tweeted in June, linking to the Regulatory Toxicology article. During a congressional luncheon a month later, the former coal executive took credit for conceiving the study before turning it over to friend, S. Stanley Young, and two other statisticians, who authored the final article. No mention of Milloy’s involvement is made in the publication.

Read more about how Big Oil is trying to sow skepticism of science among judges ]

Some of the same data were used in the Critical Reviews article published by Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr., which also disputed the link between fine particles and mortality. Cox, a biostatistician from Colorado, started consulting for API in 1988. Cox disclosed that his paper “benefitted from close proofreading and copy-editing suggestions from API” but denied in an interview that his findings were influenced.In November, he was named the next chair of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, drawing criticism from groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The science on particle pollution, much like the science on global warming, is exhaustive and widely accepted, with thousands of studies pointing to serious health implications. The World Health Organization notes that particulate matter “affects more people than any other pollutant,” with effects observed at even “very low concentrations.” The particles — found in automotive and industrial exhaust and smaller than one-fifth of the width of a strand of hair — form a toxic mix with ozone that lodges deep in the lungs. Unlike Cox, most researchers are no longer fixated on whether this form of pollution is fundamentally dangerous; they worry instead about whether it can cause — not just exacerbate — chronic illness.

Attacking the science is one way of undermining the Clean Air Act, said John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advocates for more protective air-quality standards. The Clean Air Act is routinely hailed as one of the most cost-effective federal laws,even by business groups. In 2015, the EPA estimated that the law will have saved the U.S. economy $2 trillion by 2020 while costing $65 billion to implement.About 85 percent of the act’s benefits come from reducing fine-particle pollution,which raises the risk of early death. Opponents of the law “deny that air pollution is deadly … or even harmful in order to try to pretend that no benefits are delivered,” Walke said.

Steve Milloy

Milloy’s July luncheon at the Rayburn House Office Building — billed as a “congressional staff and media briefing” — was little more than a plug for his latest book, “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” which condemns the “echo chamber of deceptive science” on ozone and fine particles. The event was hosted by Myron Ebell, who chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, a climate-skeptics’ group that began as an alliance of free-market think tanks. “It’s a lot like climate,” Milloy told the audience. “This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”

“It’s a lot like climate... This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”

Reached for comment, Milloy said the study is not an attack on the Clean Air Act but part of his 20-year effort to expose the EPA’s “garbage-in, garbage-out” air pollution research. He denied having any formal ties to API. “I am very, very disappointed in the American Petroleum Institute and all the oil companies for not defending their products, for leaving the science to people like me,” he said.

Young, who authored the study, stood behind its findings and disputed the idea that industry funding presents ethical conflicts. His study data are publicly available, he said, but the EPA isn’t as transparent. Ebell agreed, accusing the agency of using “junk science” to justify air-quality and greenhouse-gas regulation.

Despite their misgivings about the EPA, all three men have become tethered to the agency. Earlier this year, Ebell oversaw the EPA transition for Trump, leading a group that included Milloy. Young was named to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board in October.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., co-founder of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, complained that such appointments have become all too common. “These people were fringe fanatics and industry stooges fighting on behalf of the industry a propaganda war against science,” he said.

Milloy and Ebell were listed among the authors of a $2 million plan to amplify uncertainty in climate science — as revealed in a 1998 API memo leaked to The New York Times. Both say the memo grew out of an API brainstorming session that never resulted in concrete action, with Milloy calling it “just a big joke.”

Years before, API had refuted the very concept of global warming under President Charles DiBona, who joined the institute shortly after a stint as energy policy advisor to Richard Nixon in the 1970s. White House communications show that DiBona regularly met with then-API President Frank Ikard, a close friend of Nixon’s, before becoming Ikard’s deputy in 1974.

“You heard that a scientific consensus now exists,” DiBona said during API’s annual meeting in 1996. “This claim is beyond misleading; it is dead wrong.” He borrowed an analogy from MIT physicist Richard Lindzen, who likened climate models to Ouija boards. By 2003, a group of scientists funded by API had turned out the first of several studies characterizing the warming trend as a natural phenomenon.

The same year, however, the United Nations was holding its ninth conference on climate change — focusing on how to mitigate warming. In 2001, an international consortium of scientists had delivered its third report on the trend, reaffirming findings that climate change was real and manmade.

Reached by phone recently, DiBona declined to answer any questions about the organization he led for 18 years. Months after retiring from API in 1997, DiBona joined the board of Halliburton, an oilfield-service company then headed by future vice president Dick Cheney. DiBona is now an API honorary lifetime director and an advisory chairman for a mining investment company based in the Cayman Islands.

In recent years, fringe views espoused by API have found a receptive audience in U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), whose climate-denial credentials rival those of Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Since Smith became chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in 2013, the panel has handed out dozens of subpoenas — many to scientists at regulatory agencies and environmental groups — aiming to debunk climate research.

Smith — whose district includes San Antonio — has opened the committee’s hearing rooms to Cooler Heads Coalition events such as Milloy’s book promotion and briefings that urged the United States to drop out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In February, he reissued a controversial subpoena to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is investigating ExxonMobil’s historical knowledge on climate change. Since he joined Congress in 1989, Smith’s top campaign donors have been from the oil and gas sector, which gave him at least $764,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2016, Influence Map, a nonprofit environmental research group, estimated that ExxonMobil had spent about $27 million on “climate obstruction” lobbying and advertising campaigns. That amount was dwarfed by the $65 million API spent on similar efforts, the group found. ExxonMobil is one of the oldest and largest API members.

‘Tired, old industry argument’

In July, the House passed a bill targeting what its proponents called “job-killing regulations” — namely, bedrock air-quality standards. Its lead author was Rep. Pete Olson, a Republican from the ozone-plagued Houston area. All but four of the 229 “aye” votes were cast by Republicans, Lamar Smith among them.

Under Olson’s bill, states would have until 2025 to meet the EPA’s latest ozone limit, which was supposed to take effect in October. The agency, which is legally required to update air standards to keep pace with evolving science, would be obligated to review rules for pollutants once a decade, as opposed to once every five years.

The 2017 bill is the latest iteration of a proposal Olson first floated in 2015, seeking to delay regulation of ozone. The same day his bill passed, 144 trade groups, including regional offshoots of API, pledged their support in a letter to Congress. Oil and gas interests have been Olson’s top political contributors, donating more than $1 million to his campaigns since 2007. A Senate version of the bill has not come up for a vote.

In an email, Olson’s office wrote that the congressman “believes the Clean Air Act is critically important” but has “fundamental concerns” about Texas’ ability to meet tighter standards. Pollution control, the email said, “can be done rationally and with an eye on our economy.”

By law, the EPA is not allowed to consider cost when setting ozone standards, but that hasn’t stopped API and other industry groups from injecting economics into the policy debate. Much like scientists for hire, economists have provided API with grist to challenge regulations. Armed with seemingly authoritative studies from firms such as NERA Economic Consulting, the institute has recast issues such as action on climate change as reckless moves that could tank the U.S. economy. NERA, whose clients include API collaborators such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Chemistry Council, was co-founded by Irwin Stelzer, an economist who works at the Hudson Institute, a free-market think tank.

Such studies, like the NERA report Trump cited when he announced the U.S. exit from the Paris climate agreement earlier this year, can be “extremely misleading,” often tallying every conceivable cost and ignoring every possible benefit, saidBen Franta, a Stanford University researcher investigating API’s climate activities. Because data underlying these reports are proprietary, Franta said, in many cases they can neither be verified or debunked. What’s left are unsupported arguments: “New ozone rules could be the most expensive ever,” reads an API webpage linking to dozens of NERA findings.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has taken a tack similar to API’s. Since 2013, the TCEQ has paid NERA more than $870,000 for economic research on ozone — a topic the firm studied earlier for API. More than $2.2 million in taxpayer funds have also been spent on contracts with Gradient — a consultancy previously hired by API to question the benefits of a stricter ozone limit. The TCEQ declined to comment on this story but on its website describes its mission as protecting the “state’s public health and natural resources consistent with sustainable economic development.”

Anne E. Smith, a managing director at NERA, did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment. She was among several industry-friendly voices at a 2015 TCEQ ozone workshop in Austin led by Michael Honeycutt, the agency’s director of toxicology. Other speakers included Gradient scientists, the editor of Critical Reviews in Toxicology, industry toxicologist Michael Dourson and air researcher Robert Phalen, known for saying the air “is a little too clean for optimum health.”

The group’s findings were later referenced by Honeycutt at a House Science Committeehearing, where he argued against a tighter EPA ozone standard. Honeycutt said the risks posed by the pollutant were “small” and any change could discourage people from “outdoor exercise.”

Speakers at the Austin workshop have risen to prominence in the Trump administration. This fall, Honeycutt, Anne Smith, Dourson and Phalen were all named to key EPA science positions as either advisers or staff. Their fringe views on ozone — championed by API — have alarmed public-health advocates and run counter to the EPA’s own findings. The agency strengthened its ozone standard in 2015 after reviewing more than 1,000 new studies.

Economics has long figured into API’s strategy to derail ozone rules. In 1971, the newly formed EPA set the ozone standard at 80 parts per billion, but in 1979 took an unexpected U-turn and weakened it to 120 ppb — angering industry and environmentalists alike. The latter called the reversal scientifically indefensible and accused the EPA of prioritizing economics over health. API promptly sued the EPA, with President DiBona claiming the relaxed standards would still cost “billions of dollars without significantly improving the quality of the environment or the health of the public.”

Spurred by lawsuits from the American Lung Association that compelled it to update air standards based on the latest science, the EPA reverted to its original 80 ppb ozone limit in 1997. The cap is now at 70 ppb, though even that number may not be protective enough, as some research has found health effects at 60 ppb.

Nonetheless, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — a former Oklahoma attorney general with deep ties to oil and gas — tried to keep the 70 ppb standard from taking effect. He backed off on the delay after 16 state attorneys [teAm BLUE] general sued the agency in August. In a lawsuit filed this month, however, environmental groups accused the EPA of failing to enforce the rule.

Pruitt had put forth what Dr. Greg Diette — a lung specialist at Johns Hopkins University who has testified in favor of tighter ozone standards — calls “a tired, old industry argument. They say, ‘It’s going to put us out of business,’ and it doesn’t,” Diette said. “All this stuff always comes down to who has to pay.”

But not all costs are economic. High ozone days are the hardest for Diette’s patients. “It can be terrifying — it’s the sensation of not being able to breathe,” he said. “Some feel as if they're going to pass out. Some feel as if they're going to die.”

Asthmatics can do little more than hide indoors in an air-conditioned environment. The only other option, Diette said, is to move.

Relocating isn’t possible for the Rosales family of San Antonio, who are uninsured and struggling to keep up with the cost of Gabriel’s medications. The air he breathes is expected to degrade further as oil prices rebound and drilling picks up in the Eagle Ford.

720 desmog

arge business and industry associations representing the fossil fuel industry welcomed a July 13 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcement that the agency would not be strengthening air quality standards for ozone pollution, the main ingredient in smog.

Ironically, some of these same groups previously fought in court against those standards when they were set in 2015 during the Obama administration — the same standards they are now praising. That legal challenge was unsuccessful.

Texas Petroleum Chemical Plant Explosion, And Our Petrochemical 'Collective Suicide'

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/30/texas-petroleum-chemical-plant-explosion-and-our-petrochemical-collective-suicide

teqc says no problem w/ air

...Since the explosion, the TCEQ has stated that its air monitoring indicates no human health concerns, even though its website warns that “the incident is causing the release of chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Elevated levels of VOCs from this facility are odorous. Short-term exposure to high concentrations of VOCs can cause eye, nose, and throat irritation, shortness of breath, headaches, and nausea.”

Sharon Wilson, Texas coordinator of Earthworks, thinks that looking to the Texas Department of Environmental Protection for help isn’t a good bet considering its track record.

“The Texas oil and gas and petrochemical facilities have one disaster after the other, driving the globe further into climate crisis and causing local communities intense health impacts,” she told me following the incident. “The TCEQ and EPA cannot regulate existing facilities yet they continue to permit more fracking and more oil and gas infrastructure. It's past time for Texas to stop permitting new oil and gas and rapidly transition to clean renewable energy,” Wilson said.

“I woke up this morning tired, depressed and scared. I cannot be the only person terrified of this disastrous path we’re on,” Angela Blanchard, a Houston-based long-term disaster recovery expert and Brown University senior fellow, told me in an email. She is known for her work as head of the nonprofit Baker Ripley, that helped countless people after Hurricane Harvey by rapidly opening shelters.

Although she has been committed to developing solutions for community challenges that the rest of the country will face due to sea level rise from climate change, she didn’t offer any of the optimistic, uplifting thoughts she usually dispenses.

Instead she concluded, “The plant expansions continue at a record pace. We are committing a kind of collective suicide.”

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/12/13517/gop-state-attorneys-general-fight-environmental-regulations-fossil-fuel-companies

alex k

As Republican Attorneys General faced 2018 re-election bids and continued their legal challenges to Obama-era environmental regulations, fossil fuel companies poured millions of dollars into the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a political nonprofit that spends money to elect GOP AGs. That trend has continued into this year. From 2017 through mid-2019, oil, gas, and coal companies, trade associations, fossil fuel utilities, and industry executives donated over $6.7 million to RAGA, a CMD investigation has found. Fifty-five companies and trade groups and four executives made these donations.

Giving the most money to RAGA since 2017 are oil and natural gas exploration company Noble Energy ($1,020,000), oil refining and materials conglomerate Koch Industries ($755,000), natural gas energy supplier NextEra Energy Resources ($500,855), and oil and gas drillers Anadarko Petroleum ($500,000) and PDC Energy ($350,000).

RAGA's $9.6 million haul in the first half of 2019 dwarfs that of 2015, the last similar fundraising period. That amount includes contributions to RAGA’s related entities such as the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a 501(c)(4) dark-money group founded in 2014 and funded by Koch-linked political groups, the Edison Electric Institute, the Judicial Crisis Network, and the Federalist Society in past years.

In addition to helping elect Republican candidates, the corporations' donations to RAGA score them personal meetings with GOP attorneys general. At four private events each year at luxury hotels, industry lobbyists, lawyers, and executives get exclusive access to the attorneys general, and the AGs have been happy to oblige the corporations’ wishes. Numerous GOP AGs have launched lawsuits attacking Obama-era environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan, the Clean Air Act, the Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS), and ozone caps.

Other perks for annual RAGA donors include access to additional RAGA events, policy conference calls, monthly political briefings, passes to the annual Edmund Randolph Club retreats, and the option to pitch topics and be panelists at conferences. One RAGA event this year, in April, was an oil and gas summit to Houston.

In some cases, oil and gas corporations extend their communications with attorneys general beyond RAGA events. For example, former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt had secret meetings with industry lobbyists and challenged EPA regulations by sending letters to the agency that appeared to be written by Pruitt’s office but were actually authored by lobbyists for oil and gas exploration company Devon Energy. Pruitt filed 14 legal challenges to environmental regulations during his tenure as Oklahoma AG.

CMD sued Pruitt for access to thousands of emails between Pruitt's office and energy interests and sued to stop the emails' destruction. The correspondence records led to national coverage of Pruitt's close relationships with Devon Energy, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers trade association, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, and other industry interests.

Pruitt became Trump's director of the EPA in 2017, but his fellow Republican AGs continue to fight Obama's environmental regulations in the courts, buoyed by election support from RAGA.

In early 2017, as Democratic AGs began to sue the Trump administration, RAGA ramped up its electoral operation, ending a longstanding agreement with its Democratic counterpart to refrain from targeting the other party's incumbent AGs.

Arizona

In the 2018 Arizona elections, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich faced a Democratic challenger, and voters weighed in on a ballot measure to require utility companies to generate 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Brnovich ran against the measure and was buoyed byPinnacle West Capital--the holding company that owns Arizona Public Service, the state's largest public utility--which gave $200,000 to RAGA in the 2018 election cycle. Pinnacle West PAC also donated $7,000 to the Brnovich campaign, and CEO Don Brandt gave $2,500.

RAGA put nearly $3.7 million into Arizona state elections in the 2018 cycle, giving $2.9 million to Arizona for Freedom PAC, which spent most of that on ads, and over $750,000 to the RAGA Arizona PAC, which transferred the money to the state Republican Party.

Democratic challenger January Contreras had backing from the Democratic Attorneys General Association and the Tom Steyer-linked outside group Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, which spent several million dollars supporting her, but she lost a close race to Brnovich.

Far more expensive was the ballot measure campaign, the most costly in Arizona's history. Pinnacle West poured $32.3 million into political group Arizonans for Affordable Electricity, which campaigned against the measure, and Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, financed mostly by Steyer's NextGen Climate Action, spent $24 million in favor. The measure lost by a big margin.

In 2015, Brnovich and Arizona Public Service joined the multi-state lawsuit against Obama's Clean Power Plan. After Trump was elected, in late 2016, Brnovich joined 23 other states in a letter urging the new president-elect to withdraw the Clean Power Plan.

Also in 2015, Brnovich led a coalition in suing the EPA over restrictions on ozone, which coal company Murray Energy had also legally challenged.

Colorado

EPA Rejects States' Health Concerns Over Upwind Coal Air Pollution

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a notice Friday denying petitions by the states of Delaware and Maryland for it to recognize that upwind state pollution sources are interfering with their ability to meet ozone standards.

The states had used a provision of the Clean Air Act to petition for reduced nitrogen oxide emissions from coalplants in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, but the EPA found that there wasn't enough evidence that the plants were contributing to elevated ozone levels in the downwind states, InsideClimateNewsreported.

Keep reading...

https://www.alternet.org/ozone-pollution-us-national-parks-nearly-same-large-cities

Household Products Cause as Much Air Pollution as Cars, Surprising Study Finds

Petroleum-based chemicals, such as those used in paints, cleaners and personal care products such as perfumes and deodorants, contribute as much to volatile organic air pollution in urban areas as cars and trucks, according to a new finding published in Science.

The consumer products emit synthetic "volatile organic compounds" or VOCs that contribute to ground-level ozone or small particulate pollution, causing asthma, lung disease and other serious health problems.

According to the research led by Colorado University, the source of non-vehicle VOC sources is likely two or three times higher than estimated under present air pollution inventories. Meanwhile, stricter vehicle emission controls have made cars and trucks cleaner—resulting in consumer products rivaling cars in air pollution contribution.

As reported by the Washington Post:

"These results have important implications for how and what emissions we regulate," said Brent Stephens, an expert on indoor air and the built environment at the Illinois Institute of Technology [by email]. "We have traditionally focused on transportation and industrial emissions to the outdoor environment. [Volatile chemical products] are now relatively more important emission sources, and they come from both indoor and outdoor sources (and some primarily from indoor sources), although we don't regulate the vast majority of indoor environments."

Stephens noted that proposed budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency loom large in this context, because the agency conducts much relevant work on atmospheric chemistry and air quality.

"We typically think of outdoor air pollution as an outdoor problem," Stephens added. "But this study demonstrates (quantitatively) that it's more complicated than that."

...

https://www.ecowatch.com/air-pollution-consumer-products-2535518814.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/african-americans-air-pollution-2509714660.html

African Americans Disproportionately Suffer Health Effects of Oil and Gas Facilities

African American communities face a disproportionate risk of health issues caused by gas and oil pollution, according to a report issued Tuesday by two advocacy groups.

The report from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Clean Air Task Force noted the importance of Obama-era U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that finalized standard for methane and ozone smog-forming volatile organic compound (VOCs). The report states that if the Trump administration's dismantling of environmental regulations continues, the situation for African Americans will worsen.

The study found oil and natural gas facilities were built or currently exist within a half-mile of more than one million African Americans, exposing these communities to higher risks of cancer due to toxic emissions. "African-Americans are exposed to 38 percent more polluted air than Caucasian Americans, and they are 75 percent more likely to live in fence-line communities than the average American," the report said, referring to neighborhoods near to gas and oil facilities.

Counties located in the Gulf Coast Basin are home to the most counties with oil refineries and higher percentages of African Americans. Michigan, Louisiana and Tennessee, the report found, have the highest percentage of African American residents living in oil refinery counties. Texas and Louisiana, both in the Gulf Coast Basin, were home to the largest African American individuals at risk for cancer, with nearly 900,000 living in areas above the EPA's level of concern.

"The effects of oil and gas pollution are disproportionately afflicting African Americans, particularly cancer and respiratory issues, and the trend is only increasing," said Dr. Doris Browne, the National Medical Association President.

The report also found that oil and natural gas industries violate the EPA's air quality standards from natural gas emissions-related ozone smog in numerous African communities, causing more than 130,000 asthma attacks among school children. This results in more than 100,000 missed school days each year.

Defending the environmental protections finalized during the Obama administration and advocating for additional protections against pollution from the oil and gas industry will help improve the health of many African American communities, the study noted.

But the Trump administration has already begun to dismantle Obama-era EPA steps taken in 2016 that aimed to clean up toxic air pollutants such as benzene, formaldehyde and sulfur dioxide. It is also taking aim at 2016 EPA actions that address the 1.2 million existing sources of methane pollution and other airborne pollution. The White House claims these regulations are unnecessary industry burdens. The Trump administration's moves are being challenged in courts around the country.

"What this administration is discovering as it attempts to undo vital health and environmental protections is that these sensible standards cannot simply be wished away, only to the benefit of the oil and gas industry," said Sarah Uhl, program director of short-lived climate pollutants for Clean Air Task Force.

...

8/17 win

EPA Reverses Decision to Delay Obama-Era Ozone Regulation After 15 States Sue

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed course on plans to delay an Obama-era ozone pollution regulation, announcing Wednesday that EPA would comply with the rule's original Oct. 1 deadline.

The move comes a day after 15 states and the District of Columbia filed suit against EPA for the delay, claiming that Pruitt's original plan to put a one-year stay on implementation would endanger "the health and safety of millions."

https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-ozone-pollution-2468656270.html

game over?

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-epa-scott-pruitt-2176944176.html

no img

Elliott Negin

Nominating Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives lie to Donald Trump's claim that he is serious about protecting the public from pollution. While the president-elect has waffled on climate change, he has been unequivocal about toxics.

"Clean air is vitally important," Trump declared during a Nov. 22, 2016 interview with The New York Times. "Clean water," he added, "crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important." And when he announced Pruitt's nomination in early December, Trump vowed that the attorney general would "restore the EPA's essential mission of keeping our air and water clean and safe."

Putting aside the fact that the EPA has not forsaken that mission, Pruitt's track record indicates that he would do the exact opposite. Under Pruitt, the acronym EPA would stand for Every Polluter's Ally.

Since he took office as Oklahoma's attorney general in 2010, Pruitt has repeatedly sued the EPA to block key safeguards limiting power plant pollution, most notably the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which limits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which curb mercury, arsenic, cyanide and other emissions.

Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are primary ingredients of soot and smog pollution, which cause a number of respiratory problems, including bronchitis and aggravated asthma, as well as cardiovascular disease and premature death. Mercury and other toxic pollutants covered by MATS have been linked to heart disease, neurological damage, birth defects, asthma attacks and premature death. Some 25 million Americans suffer from asthma, alone. That's one out of every 12 people.

The potential benefits of the Cross-State Rule and MATS are considerable.Taken together, they are projected to prevent 18,000 to 46,000 premature deaths across the country and save $150 billion to $380 billion in health care costs annually. In Pruitt's home state, the two regulations would avert as many as 720 premature deaths and save as much as $5.9 billion per year.

Pruitt also has sued the EPA to prevent the agency from implementing a rule that would reduce the amount of ground-level ozone or smog, which the American Lung Association says is the most widespread pollutant nationwide and one of the most dangerous. Produced when sunlight heats nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide from power plants, industrial facilities and automobiles, ozone pollution has been linked to respiratory problems, cardiovascular disease and premature death. It is particularly harmful for the most vulnerable, including children, the elderly, and people already suffering from asthma or another respiratory disease.

No matter. In October 2015, Pruitt joined with four other states to challenge the new ozone rule in court, despite the fact that earlier that month, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality said the state could meet the new EPA limits.

Pruitt also has targeted clean water safeguards. In July 2015, he sued the EPA over the Clean Water Rule, which the agency and the Army Corps of Engineers had just issued to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act. The rule was in response to two Supreme Court decisions—in 2001and in 2006—that called into question whether the federal government had the authority to protect smaller streams, wetlands and other water bodies that flow into drinking water supplies. From a scientific perspective, it's a no-brainer. As EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy explained in a statement: "For the lakes and rivers we love to be clean, the streams and wetlands that feed them have to be clean, too."

Pruitt doesn't see it that way. In a March 2015 column he co-wrote with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul for The Hill, Pruitt called the Clean Water Rule "the greatest blow to private property rights the modern era has seen." Pruitt and Rand maintain that states should be responsible for protecting the environment within their respective borders, not the federal government. Never mind that air and water pollution do not honor political boundaries and state legislatures are all too often dominated by corporate interests.

Besides Pruitt's disdain for air and water safeguards, he is no fan of federal efforts to address climate change, which he falsely insists is an open scientific question. Pruitt, who has received generous contributions from fossil fuel interests, is not only party to a pending lawsuit against the EPA over its Clean Power Plan to curb electricity sector carbon emissions, he also attempted unsuccessfully to overturn the agency's science-based "endangerment finding" that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, a cornerstone of the EPA's climate work.

Public health advocates are rightly horrified at the prospect of Pruitt running the EPA. The response from Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, was typical.

"The EPA plays an absolutely vital role in enforcing long-standing policies that protect the health and safety of Americans, based on the best available science," Kimmell said in a press statement. "Pruitt has a clear record of hostility to the EPA's mission, and he is a completely inappropriate choice to lead it. ... It's this simple: If senators take seriously their job of protecting the public, they must vote no on Pruitt."

11/14

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-to-propose-tougher-rules-on-smog-causing-ozone-setting-up-clash-with-gop/2014/11/26/0a4670ce-756a-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html

Obama administration on Wednesday announced plans to tighten restrictions on smog-causing ozone, a move that will address a major cause of respiratory illness for millions of Americans while also setting the stage for new clashes with industry and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthycited ozone’s damaging effects on children and the elderly in moving to toughen limits on the pollutant for the first time since 2008. Ground-level ozone, a respiratory irritant that derives from fossil-fuel burning, is linked toasthmatic attacks and other ailments and is the cause of “code red” respiratory warnings common to Washington and other urban areas during the summer months.

”We deserve to know the air we breathe is safe,” McCarthy said in a statement announcing the proposal. In deciding to revise the ozone standard, the EPA was following a legal mandate for “bringing ozone pollution standards in line with the latest science” to protect Americans from a significant health threat, she said.

McCarthy said the EPA’s long-awaited proposal would lower the allowable ozone level from 75 parts per billion, set in the final years of the George W. Bush administration, to a new standard “in the range of 65-70 parts per billion.” As part of the rule-making process, the EPA would accept comment on a wider range of possible limits, from the current 75 ppb to as low as 60 ppb, according to other officials familiar with the EPA’s plans. The agency is expected to adopt a final rule next fall.

The EPA faced a Dec. 1 deadline to revise its standards for ozone, which is one of six pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act. Cities and counties that fail to meet the standard are required to take steps to reduce emissions to improve air quality.

Leaked details of the proposal drew sharp criticism from industry groups, which argue that tighter restrictions will lead to higher costs and losses in jobs and economic productivity. American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard said air quality is already improving throughout much of the country, and many states are still struggling to adjust to the last change in ozone regulations six years ago.

“Tightened standards could impose unachievable emission reduction requirements on virtually every part of the nation,” Gerard said. “Even pristine areas with no industrial activity such as national parks could be out of attainment.”

Some environmental groups had pushed for a tougher standard of as low as 60 ppb, yet many cheered the EPA’s move.

“It is clear that this would be a positive step forward, even if it doesn’t go as far as we think they should go,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington environmental group.

GOP lawmakers already have vowed to fight any effort by the administration to toughen existing ozone standards. Last week, Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee warned the White House that they would seek to block what they said would be one of the “most devastating regulations” ever issued by the EPA.

Industry groups had waged a month-long campaign to dissuade the EPA from adopting a stricter standard. Industry-sponsored studies — some assuming much tougher ozone limits than those the EPA is said to be contemplating — estimated economic losses in the billions of dollars.

“This new ozone regulation threatens to be the most expensive ever imposed on industry in America,” said Jay Timmons, chief executive officer of the National Association of Manufacturers.[echo by alford?] He said the proposal, coming on top of other proposed EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, could reverse recent economic gains by “placing massive new costs on manufacturers and closing off counties and states to new business.”

But other groups, including state health and environmental agencies, said the claims of economic harm were exaggerated. Some noted that current law allows states considerable flexibility and a long lead time — decades, in some cases — to come into compliance. Others pointed to studies showing economic losses due ozone-related respiratory illnesses and premature deaths.

“The public should have the right to know whether the air they are breathing is safe,” said S. William Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. “There can be a false sense of security thinking that levels at 75 ppb are safe to breathe when scientists are saying they are not.”

TPM

Smog is getting its moment in the Congressional spotlight, and the politics are dirty.

In a House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology hearing on Tuesday morning, Republicans called upon longtime utility and fossil fuel advocates — including Harry C. Alford, President and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) — to push back on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed tightening of ground-level ozone levels from to between 65 and 70 parts per billion, from the current 75 parts per billion.

Alford is no stranger to Congress. In the past, he has testified that the EPA’s efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions for power plants would cause electricity prices to skyrocket. As far back as 1998 he testified that the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol would be detrimental to minority-owned small businesses. Since 1998, the NBCC has received $800,000 from ExxonMobil. It has also been funded by the tobacco industry.

But Alford’s record of actively opposing environmental policies has struck a nerve with other black leaders in America, who are condemning his relationship with polluting industries.

This testimony harms African Americans.

Dr. Michael Dorsey, the Interim Director for the Energy and Environment Program at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, sees Alford’s tactics as being far more than simply misleading — he sees them as actually being very dangerous to African American communities.

“This testimony harms African Americans,” Dorsey, who has a PhD in environmental policy from the University of Michigan, told ThinkProgress. “Alfred’s false claims about energy are a triple threat — they harm African Americans in their wallets, they harm them in their lungs, and they threaten the environments they live in. He doesn’t even represent black business, it’s criminal.”

Automobiles, power plants, factories, and refineries all produce ozone-forming pollutants, which make up smog. Elevated ozone levels put people are at risk for premature death, aggravated asthma, and difficulty breathing, according to the American Lung Association.

Alford’s remarks Tuesday parroted his past statements. He said that the proposed strengthening of ozone regulations would “shut off huge parts of country to job growth” and would lead to “loss of good health.”

In February, Alford penned an op-ed in the Hill arguing that the EPA’s proposal will shut down coal-fired power plants, which will be harmful to African Americans and African American small business owners in need of “dependable energy and predictable utility bills.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is directly at odds with Alford’s statements. In 2012, the NAACPreleased a report called “Coal Blooded” stating that of the six million Americans living near coal plants, 39 percent are people of color. NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said that “coal pollution is literally killing low-income communities and communities of color.”

Dorsey argues that what Alford is doing condemns these minority communities to “remain underneath” dirty energy and prevents them from getting the many benefits of renewable energy. Because of this, the community Alford purports to represent is actually being dramatically misrepresented by arguments “not based on any science and not based on him being a serious advocate.”

“He’s just mouthing off talking points from Edison Electric,” said Dorsey. “It’s disturbing that he would subject himself to being so manipulated.”

Dorsey’s distress extends to Congress as well.

“Not enough Democrats or Republicans want to get together and have serious conversations about serious issues,” he said. “Throwing snowballs and playing games — when we play games with these issues people lose their lives.”

A highly partisan issue, ground-level ozone regulations have done a lot to improve air quality, and lawmakers like Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), ranking Democratic member of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, think they can and should be taken further.

This is not a new line of attack.

“As someone who worked in the public health field before I came to Congress, I am very sensitive to the effect that poor air quality can have on all Americans, especially the young and the poor,” Johnson told ThinkProgress. “Some of my colleagues repeatedly argue that any EPA regulation will kill jobs, decimate the industrial base, and cause major harm to our economy. This is not a new line of attack.”

Johnson said that these accusations have been made for decades about every major new environmental and consumer protection regulation, “from catalytic converters to scrubbers to seatbelts. We all know that none of those predictions are true.” She said it is actually quite the opposite: “There is much more evidence that jobs are created and the economy expands following the passage of major reforms.”

The overwhelming majority of scientists believe that the EPA should tighten ozone restrictions. In June 2014, the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) — made up of scientists, physicians, researchers and air pollution experts — unanimously recommended that the agency lower the limit of ozone pollution from its current standard.

“If I’m making a diagnosis, it’s not contingent on cost of treatment,” said Dr. Mary B. Rice, from Harvard Medical School, during the hearing. “Similarly with respect to ozone pollution, the medical and scientific community has made a clear and indisputable diagnosis that ozone is harmful to human health.”

As of July, 123 million people — 40 percent of the U.S. population — lived in areas that don’t meet the current ozone standards, primarily in urban and industrial settings. Ozone concentrations typically reach unhealthful levels when the weather is hot and sunny with little or no wind, according to the EPA. With a final EPA’s updated National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone due by October 1 by court order, March 17 is the last day for public comments. There have already been more than 51,000 submissions.

Tags

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/09/29/national-review-online-pushes-attack-on-bill-ny/205851

Nat'l Black Chamber President Smears Wash. Post For Exposing Industry-Funded Pro-Smog Campaign

Blog››› 1 hour and 14 minutes ago ››› DENISE ROBBINS

The president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) lashed out at TheWashington Post for exposing his organization's oil industry funding, baselessly describing a Postarticle about the group's anti-environmental agenda as "[l]ies, innuendos and false claims."

The Post recently helped pull back the curtain on the NBCC's fossil fuel-friendly agenda. In a September 28 article, The Post reported that the NBCC has been fighting an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal to reduce ground-level ozone pollution, the primary component of smog, and also noted that the NBCC is heavily funded by ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel interests. The NBCC has been fighting air pollution standards and climate change action fordecades.

NBCC president Harry Alford decried the Washington Post article in a column on his organization's website, titled "Environmental Extremists seem to be going cuckoo." Without identifying any specific errors in the Postarticle, Alford wrote that that it contained "[l]ies, innuendos and false claims" and "misinformation about the National Black Chamber of Commerce." He also described the Postarticle as "incomplete reporting, replete with racial innuendos," but failed to elaborate.

video

http://junkscience.com/2012/10/11/video-steve-milloy-on-illegal-epa-human-testing/

milloy cites dunn who sorta luudes to enstrom bs CA

More on coordinating the effort to fight EPA on air pollution claims

Posted on :{February 8, 2015:(style="border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"):}: by john1282 | Leave a comment

The magnitude of work that has appeared here at JunkScience on junk toxicology, epidemiology, and junk science EPA claims on human effects of small particle and ozone air pollution is easily gigabytes.

In fact I provided a gig size document drop box of info on the EPA issues just to get the Congressional staffers up to speed on some of the EPA junk science problems, and how to challenge EPA proposals and claims focusing on good science rules and evidence and evidentiary admissibility rules. When I invited all the science, legal, and media/think tank people I have contact with to look at the drop box information, it was a pretty quiet reception. I wasn’t putting up my writing but the writing of the best researchers and commentators on air pollution and methods in epi/tox I have seen along with the political/legal factors.

I provided the legal references on matters of strategy and jurisprudence in scientific evidence and agency matters. And more, for example info, on how to challenge EPA claims of small particle and ozone human effects.

Here at Junk Science you might be amazed at what is on the first layer, and then what’s referenced in the sources linked.

Archives pertinent to this concern about EPA junk epidemiology and tox, junk claims on small particles and ozone:

http://junkscience.com/?s=epa+hearing+exercise

http://junkscience.com/?s=epidemiology

http://junkscience.com/?s=small+particles

http://junkscience.com/?s=ozone+

http://junkscience.com/?s=daubert

http://junkscience.com/?s=clean+power+plan

http://junkscience.com/?s=clean+power+plan+health+effects

Here’s what the EPA claims will be achieved by the Clean Power Plan–all of it co benefits from some claims on air pollution asthma and premature deaths claims out of other EPA junk epidemiology.

http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents/20140602fs-important-numbers-clean-power-plan.pdf

Here’s two talking points papers JS developed on small particles and Ozone relative to the Clean Power Plan.

The EPA propaganda piece is below with the Dunn notes inserted on why the EPA is lying and exaggerating and all it really is doing is harming the economy with no benefit for humans, in fact a negative economic burden.

Why the EPA proposal on their new concept called Carbon Pollution is a scientific fraud.

John Dale Dunn MD JD

This is the EPA proposal currently being considered for eliminating coal electricity plants.

EPA FACT SHEET: Clean Power Plan

EPA web page for rule: http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/clean-power-plan-proposed-rule

Proposed rule (w/instructions for where/when to send): Clean Power Plan Proposed Rule – June 2, 2014

Regulatory Impact Analysis (will have summary of scientific basis):http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents/20140602ria-clean-power-plan.pdf

BY THE NUMBERS CUTTING CARBON POLLUTION FROM POWER PLANTS TALKING POINTS MEMO FROM THE EPA PROPAGANDA SHOP

Climate Action Plan, proposed a commonsense plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants.

Dunn note: Carbon pollution is the gimmick—Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant.

The science shows that climate change is already posing risks to our health and our economy.

Dunn note: now they introduce the concept, unrelated to carbon pollution of climate change.

The Clean Power Plan will maintain an affordable, reliable energy system,

while cutting pollution and protecting our health and

environment now and for future generations.

Cleaning Up Power Plants

• Power plants are the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, making

up roughly one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

• All told the Plan puts our nation on track to cut

carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent

by 2030—that’s about 730 million metric tonnes of carbon pollution.

Dunn note: They use the British spelling tonnes to impress us? And we should include all living things as carbon polluters, since we humans exhale it at 40,000 parts per million? Imagine cows and horses and elephants and such.

• That’s equal to the annual emissions from more than 150 million cars, or almost 2/3s of the

nation’s passenger vehicles – or the annual emissions from powering 65 million homes, over

half the homes in America.

Big Public Health and Climate Benefits

• The Clean Power Plan has public health and climate benefits

worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion per year in 2030, far outweighing the

costs of $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion.

Dunn note: Negative economic impacts much higher than that by all estimates. These numbers are clap hands for tinkerbell thinking.

• Reducing exposure to particle pollution and ozone in 2030 will avoid a projected

o 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths

Dunn Note: no one dies from the ambient air pollution—none, nada. See discussion in this part.

Discussion on ozone, which is benign and not toxic, is in Part II.

o 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children

Dunn note: air pollution does not cause asthma, it is an allergic disease. Period. Lab experiments by EPA couldn’t even show aggravation of asthma by air pollution. No one can claim air pollution causes asthma.

o 340 to 3,300 heart attacks

Dunn note: Small particle or Ozone air pollution doesn’t cause heart attacks, the nonsense about inflammatory mediators is not proven by reliable evidence, heart disease develops over a long period of time.

o 2,700 to 2,800 hospital admissions

Dunn note: Make up your minds boys, heart attacks get admitted, so do asthmatics.

470,000 to 490,000 missed school and work days

Dunn note: Sure, if small particles or ozone caused disease or illness, but they don’t. See below on small particles, see part II on ozone.

• From the soot and smog reductions alone, for every dollar invested through the Clean Power

Plan—American families will see up to $7 in health benefits.

Dunn note: never trust the EPA on economic effects and benefits. Nonsense and no factor for the impact of economic deprivation.

• The Clean Power Plan will reduce pollutants that contribute

to the soot and smog that make people sick by over 25 percent in 2030.

Dunn note: Doesn’t fit with their claim that they would only have an impact of a few thousand deaths—they claim 300,000 to 500,000 deaths—from small particles, so they should be saving 70 to 125 thousand lives. Again—don’t trust the EPA on economic or health research

o 54,000 to 56,000 tons of PM2.5

o 424,000 to 471,000 tons of sulfur dioxide

o 407,000 to 428,000 tons of nitrogen dioxide

Dunn note: Now it’s tons instead of tonnes? And sulfur and nitrous oxides are ozone precursors and don’t kill anybody anytime, but they do sound scary don’t they?

Number of power plants covered by the Clean Power Plan

• In the U.S., there are 1,000 fossil fuel fired power plants with 3,000 units covered

by this rule.

Dunn note: They are so proud of themselves, knock out a third of the grid and what do they offer, bird cuisinarts that rate about one third output of their potential and take up space and are ugly and still require backup; and, of course solar that requires back up when the sun don’t shine and is inefficient like wind.

• Utility planners are already making plans to address an aging fleet.

The average age of coal units is 42 years.

The average age of oil units is 36 years. The average age of natural gas combined

cycle units is 14 years.

Dunn Note: Useful Age of an energy plant is determined by proper maintenance, right?

Proposed State Plan Dates

June 30, 2016 – Initial plan or complete plan due

June 30, 2017 – Complete individual plan due if state is eligible for a one‐year extension

June 30, 2018 – Complete multi‐state plan due if state is eligible for two‐year extension (with progress report due June 30, 2017 )

First the small particles claims then the ozone claims, since the EPA only includes evil sounding nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide separately as ozone precursors.

EPA Claim with regards to small particles.

The EPA proposed on June 2, 2014 to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-fired power plants by reducing the amount of coal burned. EPA claims this rule will prevent up to 6,600 premature deaths annually. These deaths would not be prevented by reducing CO2 emissions but instead by accompanying reductions in emissions of “fine particulate matter” (PM2.5) — particles much smaller in diameter than the width of a human hair. As the rule would reduce CO2 emissions by reducing the amount of coal burned, it would similarly reduce PM2.5 emissions. The EPA views this reduction in PM2.5 emissions as a benefit.

EPA’s position is that:

• ANY exposure to PM2.5 can cause death in the short-term (i.e., literally sudden death) and that;

• Long-term (i.e., years or decades) exposure to PM2.5 can cause premature death.

EPA claims that PM2.5 causes as many as 500,000 deaths annually.

To support its claim that PM2.5 kills, EPA points to “thousands” of epidemiologic (statistical studies of human populations), toxicologic (experiments on animals) and clinical (experiments on humans) studies. EPA further claims that the agency’s conclusions have been endorsed by its Clean Air Act Scientific Advisory Council (CASAC), a board of outside science advisors.

Scientific Reality: PM2.5 does not kill anyone. The EPA’s claim about PM2.5 is one of the most nonsensical, fraudulent and readily disprovable scientific claims of all time.

EPA’s three bodies of research. EPA says its claim that PM2.5 kills is supported by existing epidemiology, toxicology and clinical studies. This is false.

• Epidemiology. EPA admitted in federal court that its epidemiologic studies on PM2.5 prove nothing by themselves. In 2012 litigation in which EPA attempted to justify its experiments on humans with PM2.5, EPA admitted doing the experiments because: “epidemiologic studies do not generally provide evidence of direct causation.” The purpose of the human experiments, according to EPA, was to provide a medical or biological explanation (i.e., the direct causation) that would support the merely statistical (and, by the way, controversial) results of the PM2.5 epidemiology studies.

• Toxicology. No laboratory animal has ever experienced death from PM2.5 in an experimental setting — even though animals have been exposed to levels of PM2.5 as much as 100+ times greater than human exposures to PM2.5 in outdoor air.

• Clinical studies. EPA has tested a variety of air pollutants — including very high exposures to PM2.5 — on over 6,000 human volunteers. Many of these volunteers were elderly or already health compromised — the very groups EPA claims are most susceptible to dying from PM2.5 exposures. EPA has admitted that there have been no deaths or any dangerous adverse events clearly caused by these PM2.5 exposures. PM2.5 exposures in these experiments have been as high as 21 times greater than allowable by EPA’s own air quality rules.

So EPA’s claim about PM2.5 causing death is not supported by the results from these research disciplines, individually or collectively.

Real-world evidence that PM2.5 does not cause sudden or long-term death. Everyone is constantly and unavoidably exposed to PM2.5 from both natural and manmade sources. Natural sources include dust, pollen, pet dander, forest fires, sea spray and volcanoes. Manmade sources primarily are smoking, fossil fuel burning, industrial processes, wood stoves, fireplaces and indoor cooking. Indoor exposures to PM2.5 can easily exceed outdoor exposures — by as much as a factor of 100.

Although EPA claims that almost 25% of annual U.S. deaths are caused by PM2.5, no death has ever been medically attributed to PM2.5.

Despite much research, there is no generally accepted medical or biological explanation for how PM2.5 could possibly cause death.

Much higher exposures to PM2.5 than exist even in the “worst” outdoor air are not associated with sudden death. The level of PM2.5 in average U.S. outdoor air — air that EPA claims can cause sudden death — is about 10 micrograms per cubic meter. In one day, a person breathing such air would inhale about 240 micrograms of PM2.5. In contrast, a cigarette smoker inhales approximately 10,000 to 40,000 micrograms of PM2.5 per cigarette. There is no example of a single or even multiple cigarettes smoked in a short-period causing sudden death despite the very high exposures to PM2.5. Sudden death is also not associated with other high PM2.5 exposures and environments like mines, indoor wood burning, smoking areas or extremely poor quality urban air, for example, in Chinese cities.

The EPA’s claim that PM2.5 causes long-term death is grounded in two long-term epidemiologic studies: the “Harvard Six Cities’ Study and the “American Cancer Society” (ACS) study. The Harvard Six Cities and ACS studies are controversial for a number of methodological reasons. The controversy over these studies cannot be resolved because EPA has refused to release and/or refused to compel release of key data used in the studies to independent researchers for purposes of re-analysis and replication. For results to be considered to be scientifically credible, they must be capable of being independently replicated.

A large analysis of the recent daily air quality and daily death data from California for 2007-2010 reports no association between PM2.5 and death.

But hasn’t EPA’s CASAC review and approved EPA’s conclusions about PM2.5 and death? As recently pointed out by House Space, Science and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), “The EPA’s regulatory process today is a closed loop. The agency funds the scientific research it uses to support its regulations, and it picks the supposedly independent (but usually agency-funded) scientists to review it.” These “independent” reviewers can be on the EPA payroll in the amount of tens of million of dollars. The combination of EPA’s refusal to make its key data available to the public and the obvious conflicts of interest of the EPA’s CASAC members render CASAC review not credible.

The critique of the ozone claims is a separate document attached.

The credit for this small particles discussion goes to Steve Milloy, MS Biostatistics (Johns Hopkins) JD, LLM (securities), long time web master at JunkScience.com.

Here is an Ozone discussion pertinent to the issues.

Subject: Comments on proposed 2014 Clean Power Plan Part II Ozone...

end: huge post on ozine? milloy

http://junkscience.com/2015/02/08/more-on-coordinating-the-effort-to-fight-epa-on-air-pollution-claims/

end of chunk EPA implies that the Clean Air Act requires EPA and states to allow ozone to increase to dangerous levels before they can take action to reduce ozone, and that this means warming has to cause harm before EPA can do anything about it. While this may, in principle, be the legal structure of the Clean Air Act, it has little to do with the reality of how measures to reduce ozone precursors have been and are implemented. EPA has been pre-emptively reducing ozone-precursor emissions for decades in all areas of the U.S. and will continue to do so. Local and state governments are taking additional actions to reduce the few sources of ozone precursors that are not under federal control. There has not been, is not now, nor will there be in the future any location in the country that is just sitting around waiting for ozone levels to rise.

Ozone at current, historically low levels is not a significant human health concern, and future ozone levels will be much lower, regardless of climate warming. EPA’s claims for ozone’s most serious health effects—premature death and respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalizations—are based on the results of observational epidemiology studies. However, in cases where observational studies have been tested against randomized controlled trials, the observational study results are nearly always falsified.

Laboratory studies with several different animal species show that animals do not die, even when exposed for the equivalent of many years to ozone at levels nearly ten times greater than the highest ambient levels. These results make it biologically implausible that ozone at real-world outdoor levels could be causing premature death in humans.

Studies of low-level ozone exposure with human volunteers demonstrate that an 8-hour standard of 85 ppb is more than stringent enough to protect human health with an adequate margin of safety, even from the most mild health effects EPA claims for ozone.

In its characterization of ozone’s health effects, EPA selectively emphasizes studies and portions of studies reporting harmful ozone effects, while downplaying studies reporting no effects or apparently protective ozone effects. This creates an impression that the evidence for harm from ozone at real-world levels is far more robust and consistent than the full weight of the evidence suggests.

The overall result of the above considerations is that the 85 ppb 8-hour ozone standard protects human health with plenty of room to spare. Peak annual ozone levels are already below this level in about 90 percent of the country. Continued ozone-precursor reductions will ensure that the entire country will be well below this level by the time any significant additional warming occurs. Thus, even if warming causes ozone to decrease a bit less than it otherwise would have, future ozone levels around the U.S. will still be below a level of concern for human health, with or without climate warming.

Taken together the weight of the evidence indicates that EPA has exaggerated both future ozone levels and the effects of warming on ozone levels. In reality, future ozone levels will be below a level of concern for human health, regardless of whether the climate warms.

The rest of the long paper by Schwartz is included above in another section, so I will not repeat these 50 plus pages.

http://junkscience.com/2015/02/08/joel-schwartz-deserves-a-round/

===

Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday advanced a $30.01 billion spending bill that takes aim at President Obama’s environmental regulations.

The bill would fund the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Interior Department for fiscal 2016, which begins Oct. 1, by $400 million below the level Congress enacted for 2015 and $2.2 billion less than Obama’s request.

Lawmakers voted 16-14 to advance the bill to the Senate floor. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the ranking member on the panel, signaled Democrats would oppose the bill because of its low funding allocation.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees the bill, offered three separate amendments that would boost funding to various programs, strip all policy riders and specifically remove a policy rider regarding climate change.

All three were narrowly rejected by the GOP-led panel.

The bill, Udall said, would take aim at the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act by permanently weakening them.

Republicans included provisions in the bill that would overturn a new EPA rule that asserts power over the nation’s waterways and would prevent the agency from writing a new rule on ground-level ozone pollution.

alford CoC:

USCOC: The Government Operations, Oversight & Consumer Affairs Committee has broad responsibility for the federal government’s regulatory and information collection processes, as well as the procedural operation of government agencies and consumer affairs. The committee is also responsible for developing and carrying out policy on regulatory process reform, regulatory review, and other proposals directed at taming the growth and reducing the burden of federal regulations (including regulatory flexibility, paperwork reduction, information quality regulatory accountability and cost/benefit legislation).

Apparently doing roadshows on Ozone (map of foreign invaders)