The country’s been trying to regulate pollutants for more than 35 years.

The country’s been trying to regulate pollutants for more than 35 years.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

PHILADELPHIA — Suddenly shy, Erin McCloskey dips her head, her silky brown hair falling across her face, and speaks quietly.

“You can barely breathe at all,” she says. “And it’s sometimes hard to get sentences out because you’re always trying to take a breath.”

Erin, 13, was diagnosed with asthma soon after her first birthday, when an odd cough led to her first hospitalization.

“I thought, ‘She’ll be in. We’ll get her situated. We’ll get her on the right meds. This will be the end of it,”’ says her mother, Natalie.

Two months ago, Erin was hospitalized for the 11th time.

With three of their six children diagnosed as asthmatics, Natalie and Sean McCloskey firmly believe the future of their family’s health is in the hands of federal officials who are deciding whether — and how much — to tighten air standards for smog.

Smog is one of the nation’s most widespread and deadly air pollutants. It exacerbates asthma.

How it’s formed

Also known as ground-level ozone, smog is formed when pollutants from tailpipes and industry smokestacks, plus gasoline vapors and other chemicals, react with sunlight and heat.

It’s especially bad in places that have a lot of people and a lot of cars, and are downwind from factories and power plants.

Smog doesn’t cause asthma. But it can chemically “sear” lung tissue, says Robert Tweel, board chairman of the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic.

Breathing it can cause chest pain, coughing, throat irritation and congestion, and further reduce asthmatics’ lung function.

“People will have more frequent episodes, more severe episodes, the more smog they are exposed to,” says Kevin Stewart, the association’s director of environmental health.

Levels commonly found in the United States, he says, can “significantly harm people’s health,” causing “millions of lost school and work days, hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks, and thousands of premature deaths.”

It’s not a new problem. The nation has been attempting to regulate smog and other air pollutants since creation of the Clean Air Act in 1970.

What’s changed

The year Erin turned 3, the EPA adopted stricter standards that were swiftly challenged by industry.

In 2001, when she was 7, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the agency’s favor — and, further, directed that only public health, not costs, be considered when setting acceptable pollution levels.

Faced with more lawsuits, this time from groups arguing that a mandatory five-year review of the 10-year-old standards was long overdue, the EPA this year proposed limits that were tighter still — although not, as critics point out, as strict as its own scientific advisory committee recommended. Public hearings were held in several cities over the last month.

Industry groups pointed out that air quality nationwide will continue to improve as states implement the current standards, and argued that meeting stricter limits could cost billions of dollars.

Other pollutants are factors in asthma attacks. The EPA adopted new standards for particulate matter late last year; in December, but a multistate legal challenge argues the standards do not adequately protect public health. And the agency is beginning to revisit its standards for oxides of nitrogen.

If the new smog standards are adopted, 13-year-old Erin would likely be in her 30s before they could be met.