Despite clear recommendations from its own science advisors, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced over the summer that it will delay its scheduled process to consider strengthening public health standards for ground-level ozone pollution. The announcement is the latest development in a long-running saga over this air pollutant, which is the main component of smog. As a result, the public will continue to be unnecessarily exposed to ozone levels that may be hazardous to their health for at least a few more years, an outcome especially harmful to communities currently overburdened by air pollution.
The decision to delay comes on the heels of draft recommendations released just a few months earlier by EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) that recommended lowering the primary standard from the current level of 70 parts per billion (ppb)…
Read the full article originally published at blog.ucsusa.org.