The
Honorable Stephen L. Johnson, Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20460
RE: EPA Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2005-0172
Dear Administrator Johnson:
The science is clear that you must substantially strengthen
the ozone standard to protect public health.
Although
your proposal calls for lowering the standard to
somewhere in the range of 0.070 to 0.075 parts per
million, it still falls short of the lower range
of 0.060 that was recommended by your own scientific
experts.
Even more worrisome is that you are entertaining
industry's weak proposal to keep the current standard,
although you have said yourself that it is not protective.
I urge you to reject these weak proposals and set
a standard that is truly protective of public health
-- 0.060 ppm.
I also urge you to eliminate the rounding
loophole that allows the ozone standard to be compromised
in protecting public health. Ozone or smog pollution
can cause a wide range of health problems even among
the healthiest of individuals, including shortness
of breath, increased risk of asthma attacks, and
premature death.
A number of cities in Texas have
serious problems with smog pollution, and the residents
of those cities bear the brunt of the impacts of
dirty air.
A concerted effort is needed to clean
up this air pollution, but it must start with having
as a goal an ozone standard that is protective of
human health.
Therefore, as you finalize new ozone
standards, I again urge you to reject industry's
foot-dragging and instead adopt a protective standard
of 0.060 ppm as supported by the Clean Air Scientific
Advisory Committee.
