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The groups said that President Obama’s refusal to adopt the new standard was illegal and left in place an inadequate air quality rule from the Bush administration. Near the end of his presidency, George W. Bush overruled the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific advisory panel and set the permissible ozone exposure at 75 parts per billion.
The current E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, wanted to set the standard at 70 parts per billion, near the maximum level recommended by the advisory panel. But President Obama rejected that proposal on Sept. 2, saying that compliance would be too costly and create too much regulatory uncertainty for industry. He ordered the E.P.A. to conduct further scientific studies and come up with a new proposal in 2013.
The decision infuriated environmental groups, who called it a betrayal, but cheered business leaders, who said that the ozone rule was one of the most onerous of the administration’s proposed environmental regulations.
The E.P.A. said last month that it would adopt the Bush-era standard and work toward tightening it in the future. The five groups that sued — Earthjustice, the American Lung Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Environmental Defense Fund — said that was not adequate and asked a federal court in Washington to review the administration’s action.
“The rejection of stronger standards was illegal and irresponsible, in our view,” said David Baron, a lawyer for Earthjustice. “Instead of protecting people’s lungs as the law requires, this administration based its decision on politics, leaving tens of thousands of Americans at risk of sickness and suffering.”
The same groups had sued the Bush administration over its ozone policy, but agreed to suspend the suit when the Obama administration came to office and promised to reconsider the Bush standard. That reconsideration was delayed several times before finally being killed by the president last month.
Ground-level ozone is the main ingredient in smog, which is linked to premature deaths, heart attacks and lung ailments, including childhood asthma.
The standard rejected by Mr. Obama would have thrown hundreds of counties out of compliance with air quality regulations and imposed costs of $19 billion to $25 billion, according to E.P.A. estimates. But the resulting health benefits would have been $13 billion to $37 billion, the agency calculated.
via nytimes.com
Groups Sue After E.P.A. Fails to Shift Ozone Rules
Health and environmental groups challenged the Obama administration’s rejection of stricter air quality standards.
"Are You Giving Your Kids Asthma?"
Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sloan-barnett/causes-of-asthma_b_1004369.html Sent by George Lindemann
Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sloan-barnett/causes-of-asthma_b_1004369.html Sent by George Lindemann
My son Spencer had just turned three when, one day, I noticed he was coughing a lot. At first, I didn't think anything of it. Kids get sick. I told him to lie down, thinking he'd be fine -- it was just a cough. A short time later, I realized that his heart was pounding, as if it were trying to beat right out of his chest.
Terrified, my husband, Roger, and I rushed him to the hospital. We spent the next two nights in the ICU. The doctors told us he had something called reactive airways dysfunction syndrome -- a form of asthma. Neither my husband nor I had any family history of asthma, going back four generations. So we concluded that the cause was environmental.
It didn't take long to discover that the U.S. is in the midst of an asthma epidemic. The number of people diagnosed with asthma grew by 4.3 million in the last decade. About one in 10 American children currently suffer from asthma -- a nearly threefold increase from 3.6 percent in 1980. A suspected cause of these stunning changes?
At least six well-designed epidemiological studies have pointed to one answer: A strong link between the use of certain cleaning products and asthma. That stopped me cold. The cause of my son's asthma may have been me. I may have been poisoning my own son.
The good news is that this is one area where easy, affordable solutions are available. First and foremost, you should avoid what can be the strongest asthma triggering chemicals present in conventional cleaners such as bleach, hydrochloric acid and ammonia. And as we discussed last week, these chemicals are often mixed together to create an even more dangerous combination. Next go out and buy yourself non-toxic, biodegradable, green cleaning products.
1. Gather all your cleaning products and read the labels.
2. Notice how dangerous and toxic they are. Then, take a deep breath (but not near the cleaning products).
3. Take all the ones that say "danger," "poison" or contain chlorine bleach and ammonia and put them in a garbage bag.
4. Call your local sanitation department and ask them how to dispose of them safely.
5. Buy green cleaning products, and breathe deeply and safely.
By the way, my son is 11 and hasn't been to the emergency room in 1,825 days. But who's counting?
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Have you ever looked at the ingredient list of your favorite fragrance? I guarantee you cannot pronounce most of the words. That can't be good. And did you also know that the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found 14 secret ingredients not even listed on the label -- they call them trade secrets. I call them synthetic chemicals. To make matters really worse, it's totally legal to omit those ingredients from the label.
It's unusual to find a household or personal-care product made without synthetic fragrances. You practically can't escape it. Recently I was putting on lipstick and I noticed it was perfumed. Why would I possibly want my lipstick to smell good? I call this "involuntary aromatherapy," and we're all exposed to it every day.
Fragrances may seem benign, but they can irritate the eyes, nose and throat. Many of the individual chemicals in perfumes and other fragrances can also potentially cause damage to the liver, kidney, immune and reproductive systems.
And virtually all fragrances are stabilized with phthalates -- yes, we've heard about them before. They're plasticizers and fragrance carriers that are banned in children's toys, but still used in a wide array of consumer products, especially those containing PVC (polyvinyl chloride).
They're in nail polishes, where they keep polishes flexible; in hair sprays, where they keep your hair from stiffening too much; and -- more importantly -- in the vast majority of fragrances, where they help to stabilize, or "fix" perfumes in products to make fragrances last longer.Phthalates are especially dangerous to children. The Washington Toxic Coalition explains in no uncertain terms that a developing baby is extremely vulnerable to the effects of toxic chemicals. They develop at a breakneck pace in the womb, and that development is easily derailed by toxic chemicals. Unlike adults, babies also have a very limited ability to detoxify foreign chemicals.
Just last month, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health found that higher prenatal exposures to phthalates significantly increased the odds of motor and behavioral developmental delay during the preschool years. The Center for Health Environment and Justice summarizes the mounting evidence against phthalates in "This is Your Brain on PVC." The facts on trends in learning disabilities are startling:
• The incidence of learning and developmental disabilities appears to be rising, affecting about one in six children in the U.S.
• The number of children in special education programs classified with learning disabilities increased 191 percent from 1977 to 1994.
• Since the early 1990s, reported cases of autism spectrum disorder have increased tenfold. One in a hundred American children has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed childhood psychiatric disorder in the United States. Recent evidence suggests the prevalence may be as high as 17 percent for all school children.
• The U.S. has seen a six-fold increase in ADHD between the years 1985 (0.7 million cases) and 2000 (4-5 million cases).
Many naysayers believe that these numbers are exaggerated -- that we are perhaps just better today at identifying these problems in children. I say that may be true in part, but the numbers speak for themselves and are way too staggering to dismiss.
But there is a silver lining to this dark cloud: Phthalates don't build up in our bodies. When the source of exposure is removed, levels decrease quickly.
You can begin making a difference for you and your family right now by skipping PVC plastic (vinyl) in products like shower curtains, food wrap and flooring, and checking ingredient lists to avoid "fragrance" and phthalates. You can find detailed information on thousands of products in the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database.
On a personal note, I stopped wearing perfume when I gave birth to my first child 11 years ago. It just didn't feel right when my infant smelled like Chanel No. 5. I may no longer smell like jasmine or spice, but I'm a lot safer.
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