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The Battle Over Air Quality Standards Essay

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The Battle Over Air Quality Standards

Proposed by: The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The American Lung Association (ALA)
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
The Sierra Club
Consumer and Other Environmental Organizations

Opposed by : The Air Quality Standards Coalition (It consists of approximately 600 industrial companies and interest groups)

Automobile manufacturers
The American Trucking Association,
The National Association of Manufacturers
The Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA)

According to the annual survey of air quality done by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1995, air pollution has decreased 30% nationwide over the past twenty five years yet "80 million …show more content…

Now, EPA faces a big conflict on the control of these two pollutants.

The beginning of this conflict goes all way back to 1991, when the American Lung Association (ALA) among with consumer and environmental organizations sued EPA stating that the agency had not revised the ozone or PM standards as required by law even though there was sufficient evidence that the standards needed to be tightened. In fact, EPA has reviewed the standards only twice, in 1979 and 1987, since the initial standards were set during the early 1970s. But EPA has made no change to the standard then. As a consequence, a court ordered EPA to publish a proposed standard for public comment by the end of November 1996. On November 26, 1996, EPA announced its proposal for new air quality standards. In this proposal, EPA recommends that the standard of the ozone emission to be lowered from 0.12 ppm measured over one hour to 0.08 ppm measured over eight hours. As for the PM, the current standard requires the concentration of PM smaller than 10 micron to be lower than 50 micrograms per cubic meter annually and 150 micrograms per cubic meter daily; but the new proposal recommends the concentration of PM smaller than 2.5 micron to be lower than 15 micrograms per cubic meter annually and 50 micrograms per cubic meter daily, and the current standard is maintained for the concentration of PM larger than 2.5

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