The Environmental Protection Agency won’t set stricter federal limits on industrial soot pollution, setting up a challenge for the incoming Biden administration if it seeks to tighten the standards to match what the agency’s scientists have said would protect public health.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the decision Monday, making official a proposal from April to retain the current national standard for fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, commonly known as soot. The action likely locks in the current standard for at least many months, if not several years, even if the Biden team attempts to reverse it.
Wheeler, in a virtual press conference, touted the EPA’s completion of the review within the five-year time frame allotted by law, a deadline the agency hasn’t met in the past. He also said the United States has continued to reduce fine particle pollution in recent years, including under the Trump administration.
“The U.S. now has some of the lowest fine particulate matter levels in the world, 5 times below the global average, 6 times below the average in China, and lower than the PM levels in France, Germany, and the U.K.,” Wheeler said. Joined by West Virginia officials, including Republican Gov. Jim Justice, he also noted the coal-heavy state, as of October, is now meeting federal limits for all six criteria air pollutants for the first time since 1978.
The West Virginia officials praised the EPA’s decision to maintain the current soot standards.
If the limits had been tightened, “it would have been a huge blow for the coal industry,” said Douglas Buffington, West Virginia’s senior deputy attorney general, during the press conference. “Upsetting baseline rules like these could, of course, see extreme and costly restructuring of the industry.”
The EPA’s decision keeps in place the levels set by the Obama administration in 2012, and it spurns calls by environmentalists and recommendations from the agency’s own scientists that tighter limits are needed to protect public health. The EPA is also retaining current standards for coarse particles, or PM10.
Fine particle pollution can cause increased respiratory symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, nonfatal heart attacks, and premature deaths in people with lung or heart disease, according to the EPA. Agency scientists, in a draft report last year, suggested setting stricter standards for fine particles of between 8 and 10 micrograms per cubic meter, compared with the 12 micrograms per cubic meter level the agency is retaining.
Groups representing the oil, chemical, and other industries, as well as conservative groups, had encouraged the EPA to keep the standards where they are.
“A decision to unreasonably ratchet down these standards could have been the costliest regulation in history, with wide swaths of the United States facing severe penalties, permitting barriers, and economic repercussions,” said Martin Rodriguez, a policy analyst with Americans for Prosperity.
Environmentalists, however, are already calling on the incoming Biden administration to reverse Wheeler’s decision.
“We call on President-elect Joe Biden to put a high priority on significantly strengthening the” fine particle standards, said Harold Wimmer, head of the American Lung Association. “The new administration has an obligation to restore sound science as the foundation of policymaking, and the science is very clear that particle pollution makes people sick and causes premature death at levels the Trump administration says are safe.”
Wimmer added that tightening fine particle pollution limits can also be a critical tool to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a key priority for Biden’s team. Many of the industrial sources that produce fine particle pollution, such as coal plants and vehicle tailpipes, are also large carbon emitters.
Nonetheless, it could take the Biden administration some time to reverse Wheeler’s decision or tighten the soot standards. The Biden EPA could seek to undo Wheeler’s decision but would have to undertake a monthslong rule-making process. Otherwise, the Biden administration could seek to tighten the standards as part of the EPA’s next five-year review.
Wheeler has dismissed complaints that he had short-circuited the review of the fine particle standards, which included a comprehensive assessment of up-to-date scientific literature outlining the health effects of the pollutant.
The EPA disbanded a panel of independent scientific advisers slated to review that assessment, and it rejected requests to reinstate it even after the agency’s seven-person Clean Air Act Advisory Committee said it didn’t have enough resources to conduct such a complex scientific review. That committee ultimately split on whether to tighten the standards.
The Biden EPA team could, and is likely to, quickly reinstate the independent panels disbanded by Trump officials. The Trump administration had also disbanded a similar panel reviewing national ozone standards.
The EPA has also proposed to retain national air quality standards for ozone, though it is still working on finishing that rule-making. Wheeler told reporters the EPA is on track to finish the ozone standards “a few weeks” after Monday’s decision, but the agency hasn’t submitted the final version to the White House budget office for interagency review yet, a process that can often take several weeks or months.
