The Environmental Protection Agency is declining to tighten national standards for smog, locking in the air pollution limits at their current levels ahead of the Biden administration.
It is the second such move the Trump administration has taken in recent weeks. Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced a decision to retain current standards for industrial soot pollution, despite calls from public health advocates and the agency’s scientists to tighten them.
“This decision comes after careful review of the most current scientific evidence, risk, and exposure information, and after consultation with the agency’s independent science advisers,” Wheeler told reporters Wednesday of the decision to keep national air quality limits for ozone at their current levels. The Obama administration last tightened the ozone standards in 2015, from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion, over objections from industry groups.
Ground-level ozone is the primary contributor to smog, and it can cause trouble breathing, increase the frequency of asthma attacks, and damage lungs, according to the EPA.
The actions to keep the air quality limits stagnant likely locks in the current levels for at least many months, if not several years, even if the Biden administration attempts to reverse course. The EPA is required to review national air quality limits for ozone, fine particle pollution, and other air pollutants every five years.
Wheeler, in remarks to reporters, said the U.S. has continued to reduce ozone and other air pollutants during the Trump administration. He also touted the EPA’s ability to complete reviews of the ozone and fine particulate matter standards within the five-year legal deadline, which the agency has periodically had trouble meeting.
The review process “had gotten out of control,” Wheeler told reporters, noting it had taken seven to eight years to complete the process.
He added the ozone announcement marks only the second time the EPA has ever met the five-year time frame for any of the six criteria air pollutants it regulates.
However, environmentalists and public health advocates had called on the EPA to strengthen the ozone standard, and they accused Wheeler of trying to rush the decision to hamstring the incoming Biden team. They argue the Biden EPA should prioritize quickly reversing Wheeler’s decisions and setting stricter air quality limits.
There is strong scientific evidence that ozone harms human health at levels of exposure lower than where the EPA’s standard is set, according to the Clean Air Task Force. “A reasonable place” for the EPA to set the primary ozone standard would be 60 parts per billion, the environmental group said. The American Lung Association also identified a 60 parts per billion limit as the maximum level of ozone the EPA should allow in the air.
However, Wheeler said he believes keeping the standards at 70 parts per billion is “in keeping with where the science is today and where the science was in 2015.” He also noted that while some EPA career scientists had recommended he tighten the standards for fine particulate matter, the agency’s staff were “all in agreement” that the agency should maintain the current ozone standard.
Environmentalists and former EPA officials have also accused the Trump EPA of short-circuiting the review process for the ozone and particulate matter standards. The EPA declined to create an independent panel of outside scientific experts to assist with the ozone standards review, as has been typical practice, and disbanded a similar panel that had been created to help review fine particle pollution standards.
John Bachmann, a former associate director for science, policy, and new programs in the EPA’s air office, called the Trump administration’s review “corrupt and inadequate,” arguing the small group who did review the standards were “admittedly ill-equipped” to conduct the assessment.
“Restoring a sound, science-based approach to reviewing the National Ambient Air Quality Standards should be high on the list of priorities for a rejuvenated EPA,” Bachmann added.
Wheeler pushed back directly on the comments from Bachmann and other former EPA officials who said the agency upended the review process to shut out scientific experts.
“When they were here, they actually helped create this process that went beyond the law, that actually violated the Clean Air Act,” the administrator said.
He added that if a future administration restores the panel of outside scientists as part of the air quality standards review, as many environmental groups have urged the Biden team to do immediately after taking office, it would violate the Clean Air Act, unless they found another way to speed up the reviews.
“Any additions to the process or extensions of the process will take more than five years, and I think that would actually open up the agency to litigation,” Wheeler said.
