Biden Administration Won’t Update Health Limits for Ozone by 2024
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency will not finish by 2024 its reconsideration of an unsafe ozone health standard left in place by the Trump administration, the agency announced today. Instead, EPA will start its review over, significantly delaying the process of updating public health standards for ozone air pollution, and leaving an unprotective limit untouched.
Following is a statement from John Walke, director of clean air for NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
“This means tens of millions of Americans will be subject to unsafe air pollution for years to come. The national ozone standard is not only outdated, but it was left unchanged by the Trump administration’s EPA which ignored medical science because it was more interested in protecting polluters than people.
The EPA has had four years to get this done, and the agency must commit to finalizing this review by the law’s deadline of 2025.”
BACKGROUND
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set and review a national health standard for ozone air pollution every five years, and that standard must protect public health with an adequate margin of safety.
The agency last updated the limit back in 2015, setting the standard that remains in effect today at 70 ppb.
Last month, the agency’s own independent expert advisors, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, recommended EPA set the standard between 55 and 60 ppb.
In 2020, the Trump administration’s EPA left the 70 ppb standard untouched, ignoring a wide body of scientific and medical evidence that it would not protect public health with an adequate margin of safety.
President Biden, upon taking office in January 2021, directed EPA to reconsider that decision and EPA initiated a formal reconsideration of the standards in the fall of 2021.
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law, and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health, and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd). Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.