by Nick Pope
The Daily Caller News Foundation
A proposed update to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) air quality standards could severely harm American industry while undermining President Joe Biden’s agenda, according to a Tuesday letter signed by more than 70 industrial executives and trade group representatives.
The letter to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients warns that the EPA’s January proposal to tighten the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution (PM 2.5) could result in huge swaths of the country being in noncompliance with the rule, and that it could strangle development and undermine key programs and policies of Biden’s industrial agenda. The EPA estimates that the policy would generate up to $43 billion in net health benefits in 2032, as well as prevent 4,200 premature deaths per year and restore 270,000 lost workdays per year by reducing the current standard of allowable fine particle pollution by up to 25%.
“A proposed discretionary revision to this standard, which is under review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, could put nearly 40% of the U.S. population in areas of nonattainment,” the letter states. “Doing so would risk jobs and livelihoods by making it even more difficult to obtain permits for new factories, facilities and infrastructure to power economic growth. This proposal would also threaten successful implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act and the important clean energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act.”…
The proposal “is grounded in the best available science,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said when the proposal was unveiled in January. However, Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, disagrees.
“PM 2.5 is the most demonstrable science fraud going on at the EPA,” Milloy told the DCNF. “There is more than enough scientific research to demonstrate that what EPA is doing here is fraud, and it is really a testament to the corruption of the scientific community.”
