EPA to Revise Particulate Matter Standards

- by Rachel Smolker

Med­ical pro­fes­sion­als agree that particulates—especially the small­er ones that can enter deep into the lungs—are harm­ful to human health, so much so that there is, in fact, no “safe lev­el” of expo­sure. Yet, the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency is tasked with set­ting a lev­el for par­tic­u­late emis­sions from bio­mass and oth­er pow­er plants—as if some num­ber of ill­ness­es and deaths is “accept­able.”

The agency is now con­sid­er­ing pub­lic com­ments on their pro­posed (and long over­due) revi­sion of the Nation­al Ambi­ent Air Qual­i­ty Stan­dards for par­tic­u­lates. EPA is required to review these stan­dards every 5 years—but the last time they were reviewed in 2006, the agency end­ed up in a court bat­tle that kicked back any tough­en­ing of stan­dards for fine par­tic­u­lates. The cur­rent process is a response to that his­to­ry. And as the years tick by, hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple suf­fer the con­se­quences and costs of par­tic­u­late-relat­ed dis­eases, includ­ing car­diopul­monary dis­eases, strokes, asth­ma, and pre­ma­ture births. 

Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, the White House Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get inter­vened in this pro­posed stan­dard, forc­ing EPA to pro­pose less strin­gent lim­its on PM 2.5 (Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter 2.5 microns or less) than ini­tial­ly suggested—a move con­sid­ered quite inap­pro­pri­ate giv­en EPA’s man­date to base deci­sion mak­ing on sci­ence, not pol­i­tics. But pol­i­tics tend to rule in the end. The White House is well aware that EPA is under incred­i­bly intense pres­sure. Right wing repub­li­cans are intent on under­min­ing any and all regulation—they claim it’s “bad for the econ­o­my” and raise the threat of job loss­es. Appar­ent­ly they have not read the numer­ous stud­ies show­ing that sav­ings in health­care costs out­weigh costs of com­pli­ance with stricter reg­u­la­tions (not to men­tion the many oth­er ben­e­fits of less pollution). 

The crux of the mat­ter is: Who saves mon­ey and oth­er­wise ben­e­fits? Does the pub­lic (our fam­i­lies, our chil­dren, our lungs) ben­e­fit from bet­ter health and few­er health­care costs, or do pol­lut­ing indus­tries seek­ing to max­i­mize their own prof­its get away with­out hav­ing to pay the expens­es to clean up their mess? Bio­mass incin­er­a­tors spew particulates—even more per unit of ener­gy gen­er­at­ed than coal facil­i­ties, in many cas­es. Those par­tic­u­lates include ultra­fine and “nano” particles—those so small they can bypass most of the bod­ies defens­es and deliv­er tox­ins direct­ly into the blood­stream. EPA has not even begun to con­sid­er reg­u­lat­ing those, which are increas­ing­ly rec­og­nized as by far the most health damaging.

The rea­son? These very fine par­tic­u­lates are dif­fi­cult to mea­sure, dif­fi­cult to clean up (they bypass most fil­ters in smoke­stacks), and some of them form not in smoke­stacks, but some­where in the atmos­phere, from the agglom­er­a­tion of chem­i­cals emit­ted that sub­se­quent­ly react in the atmos­phere to form small par­ti­cles. Like oth­er par­tic­u­lates, these play a key role in glob­al warm­ing when they col­lect in the atmos­phere (as aerosols) and are deposit­ed on snow and ice (dark­en­ing it, there­fore caus­ing it to melt faster).

Those who feel pol­lu­tion should not be reg­u­lat­ed will be at least mol­li­fied to find that facil­i­ties with pre-con­struc­tion per­mits are “grand­fa­thered” and will be exempt­ed. That means a large num­ber of facilities—including some par­tic­u­late-spew­ing bio­mass incinerators—will not have to com­ply with stricter reg­u­la­tions at all. Oth­ers will have five years to com­ply, and if that’s too chal­leng­ing, there is oppor­tu­ni­ty to apply for an exten­sion. Mean­while, fam­i­lies across the coun­try will con­tin­ue to strug­gle under the bur­den of pol­lu­tion, lit­er­al­ly sub­si­diz­ing pol­luters with their own hearts, lungs, and blood.