Forty years ago, cleaning up the air we breathe was a collective goal. Today, it's a national achievement, one that reflects core public health principles such as protecting our environment, reducing health disparities, and safeguarding our communities. That very achievement, though, is at risk along with the principles it embodies. The Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are under attack. Together, we must address this assault, or its success will turn back the clock on public health and safety.
Galvanized by the 1969 oil blowout off the coast of Santa Barbara and the chemical fires on Ohio's Cuyahoga River, the national consensus on protecting the environment and the public's health and welfare coalesced the following year around the formation of the EPA and passage of the Clean Air Act. Since then, EPA enforcement of the Clean Air Act has resulted in sharply reduced air pollution from automobiles, industrial smokestacks, utility plants, cement factories, and other major sources of ground-level ozone, toxic chemicals and particulate matter that cause or contribute to asthma, emphysema, heart disease, and other potentially lethal respiratory ailments.
The benefits can be measured in lives saved–tens of thousands each year. In economic terms, these protections have saved the country tens of trillions of dollars by keeping Americans healthy in school and on the job (The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1970 to 1990. Executive Summary. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/cleanairactbenefits/1970-1990/812exec2.pdf. Accessed July 29, 2011). A recent EPA analysis of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) found that the benefits from CAAA regulation far outweigh the costs by a factor of 30 to 1 with high-benefit estimates exceeding costs 90 to 1 (The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1990 to 2020. Final Report. April 2011. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/cleanairactbenefits/feb11/fullreport.pdf. Accessed July 29, 2011).
Furthermore, these efforts have led to innovations turning US companies into the leading producers of environmental equipment, which in 2007 generated $282 billion in revenues as well as $40 billion in exports, while supporting 1.6 million US jobs (Jackson LP. Remarks on the 40th Anniversary of the Clean Air Act. September 14, 2010. Available at: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/12a744ff56dbff8585257590004750b6/7769a6b1f0a5bc9a8525779e005ade13!OpenDocument. Accessed July 29, 2011).
EPA enforcement of the Clean Air Act continues to evolve. Under a 2007 directive by the US Supreme Court, the EPA identified carbon pollution, a leading contributor to climate change, as a danger to public health and the environment. Rising temperatures expose more Americans, especially our most vulnerable, to conditions that result in illness and death caused by respiratory illness, heat-related stress, and insect-borne diseases. To address climate change and related health threats, the EPA produced the first-ever carbon emission standards for US cars and light trucks and is tailoring its standards to the largest industrial polluters by providing them with clear, achievable goals while allowing them broad flexibility in how those objectives are achieved. Such reductions in pollution would prevent tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of respiratory disease cases each year. Furthermore, achieving these objectives would yield billions of dollars in public health benefits—several times the cost of implementing the needed change.
Regarding toxins, the EPA recently issued its cross-state pollution rule to protect Americans living downwind from coal-burning power plants from sulfur, nitrogen, and toxins emitted from those utilities that travel across state lines. According to the EPA, this ruling could save 14 000 to 36 000 lives every year from averted heart attacks, strokes, and respiratory illnesses saving hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs annually, a small fraction of the cost of implementation (US Environmental Protection Agency. Proposed transport rule would reduce interstate transport of ozone and fine particle pollution. 2010. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/airtransport/pdfs/FactsheetTR7-6-10.pdf. Accessed July 29, 2011).
While these and other common sense measures offer important public health protections, there are moves in Congress to block them. Rather than turn back the clock, Congress should fully support the Clean Air Act and allow the EPA to fulfill its responsibilities to protect our health. For tens of thousands of people, doing so is quite literally a matter of life and death; and for hundreds of thousands more of us, it will mean the difference between living with chronic, debilitating illness or living disease-free and healthy.
For more than 40 years, the Clean Air Act has proven to be strong public health policy. We should give the EPA our full support in its enforcement.
Earthquake survivors react to a just-distributed lamp at an evacuation center which became dark following sunset in the devastated town of Minamisanrikucho, northeastern Japan, a week after a massive earthquake and resulting tsunami. Printed with permission of AP Photo/Kyodo News.