Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a two-year delay on regulations of light- and medium-duty vehicle pollution. Below is a statement from Steven Higashide, director of the Clean Transportation Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS):
Lana Cohen
Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a two-year delay on regulations of light- and medium-duty vehicle pollution. Below is a statement from Steven Higashide, director of the Clean Transportation Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS):
“The proposed rollback is a direct threat to public health. It will leave families breathing dirtier air and facing greater health risks.
“The light- and medium-duty vehicle criteria pollutant standards protect against soot- and smog forming pollution. This pollution is linked to asthma, heart disease, respiratory illness, stroke and premature death. Children, older adults, people with preexisting health conditions, and those living in communities already burdened by poor air quality are particularly vulnerable.
“EPA’s own modeling shows that rolling back these standards would result in tens of thousands of tons of harmful pollution. While EPA will no longer calculate the health impacts from potential policies, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates this will lead to hundreds of premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of lost days of work and school due to asthma.
“The technology to prevent these harms exists today, is cost-effective, and has been deployed in Europe for a decade. This senseless delay is just one more example of the administration’s failures to hold the automotive industry accountable.
“Properly enforced science-based pollution standards help maintain the clean air that everyone depends on. Weakening some of the most effective safeguards we have against pollution will expose more communities to carcinogens and pollutants that make people sicker.
Heightening public health risks by allowing preventable pollution is indefensible.”