Ozone alert: Politics at play?

The Washington Post: Last week the Environ–mental Protection Agency tightened the limits on the amount of smog-inducing pollutants that could be released into the air from 84 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion. This is important. Not since 1997 had the ozone standard been strengthened. The EPA estimates up to 2,300 fewer premature deaths and savings of up to $19 billion in health-care costs by 2020. But the intervention of President Bush in the decision has environmental activists questioning whether politics trumped science in fashioning the new ozone rules.

Earth’s protection

Good ozone is what protects Earth from the burning rays of the sun. But bad ozone, which can lead to and aggravate respiratory ailments during long exposure, forms when sunlight and heat at the ground level mix with the emissions from cars, power plants and other entities. The Clean Air Act regulates the bad ozone on two levels. The primary standard seeks to protect public health while the secondary one guards the public welfare or the overall environment. A unanimous Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that in setting the new limit, only science can be considered, not the costs of implementation.

There was a vigorous debate within the administration over how to monitor and measure the two standards and over whether to join the two standards under a common approach or to deal with them separately. The back-and-forth is discussed in the EPA’s final rule, including Mr. Bush’s decision last week that the two standards should be joined. Environmentalists are enraged because, they say, the president usurped EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson’s authority under the Clean Air Act to make the final determination. They are also unnerved that the agency ignored a scientific advisory panel’s recommendation of limits between 60 and 70 parts per billion for public health.