March 21, 1997

Asthma Card Played in the Clean Air Game

Although not under court order to do so, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Browner "piggy-backed" a discretionary rulemaking to increase the current urban ozone standard on top of the court-ordered air particles rulemaking, for which a final rule is due by July 19. By mingling a voluntary rulemaking with the court-ordered one, the Administrator appears to be seeking to ratchet up ozone controls while the focus is on the particulates proposal. Or perhaps, Browner is simply cynically intermingling a "help asthmatic children" appeal in a deliberate attempt to get a synergistic effect with the "prevent 40,000 premature deaths per year" slogan that's being used to advance the particulates rule.

Even EPA Admits Browner's Ozone Proposal Is A Bad Deal

There is a growing consensus that EPA's ozone proposal is correct in changing the current ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) measurement standard from a one-hour period to an eight-hour period. Indeed, all 12 of EPA's Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASC) ozone panelists recommended the eight-hour period. Highly controversial, however, is EPA's additional proposal to change the current ozone concentration limit of .12 parts per million (ppm) over any one-hour period to .08 ppm over the eight-hour period. The 0.8 standard is more stringent than that recommended by the majority of the CASC panel. An eight-hour standard at a concentration of .09 ppm (with two to three allowable times to exceed in a year) is generally considered equivalent to today's one-hour standard at .12 ppm.

Unfortunately, the EPA Administrator has selected a concentration standard of .08 ppm, which -- although it does not seem much different than the .09 option -- will almost triple the number of U.S. counties in ozone nonattainment, and, according to EPA, leave between 53 million and 89 million people in permanent ozone nonattainment. Even EPA's own flawed cost estimate for its ozone proposal was between $600 million and $6.3 billion per year for partial compliance. However, the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University (CSPC) estimates that the EPA's ozone proposal will cost between $54 billion and $328 billion per year, for negligible or even negative net health benefits. Moreover, even EPA, using inflated estimates for benefits and underestimated costs for the ozone proposal, acknowledges the proposal will impose costs in excess of benefits of between $1.1 billion and $6.2 billion each year. This net cost is over and above EPA's estimate of the current standards' costs, which it admits exceed the value of the health benefits by between $400 million and $2.2 billion per year.

Double Dealing with Ozone Health Benefits

Ozone, whether it is in the air just above the ground or up in the stratosphere, blocks harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun that cause skin cancer and cataracts. However, the EPA did not consider these negative health impacts of reducing ground level ozone. The Department of Energy is reported to have tried to get EPA to consider the increased health risks from reductions in ground-level ozone as part of its cost/benefit analysis. EPA refused, despite the fact it had costs readily in hand from its cost/benefit studies used in its stratospheric ozone rulemakings. (See e.g., EPA's rule accelerating the deadline for manufacturing CFC's, 58 FR 65022, 12/10/93; and RPC's Regulation Watch, "Accelerated Phase-Out of CFC's," 8/10/94.) Using the EPA's own previous analyses of increased ultraviolet radiation from thinned ozone, the CSPC estimates that the health costs of just the ultraviolet light increases would exceed all the health benefits EPA attributes to the proposed ozone rule by almost $250 million per year. The CSPC also estimates the negative effects on commercial fisheries, commodity crops and polymers would range from $6.3 million to $347.2 million per year.

Trumping the Asthma Card

Any level of ozone in the air will aggravate -- although ozone does not cause -- asthma, particularly in people who are exercising. Asserting that "asthmatic children have the right to play outdoors with the other kids," supporters of the EPA proposal, such as the Sierra Club, are taking advantage of concerned parents in order to give the proposal an emotional push. Some responses from opponents of the ozone proposal are included below:

We all want asthmatic children to be able to play outside with the rest of the kids on a summer day. That is why Congress aggressively funds asthma research. But, we also want all children to be able to play outside without an increased threat of skin cancer. And we want to make sure that all parents are employed and can live in a sufficiently strong economy so they can give their children the best medical care possible. [In addition to the importance of a healthy economy to national social/welfare goals, the CSPC used studies linking income and mortality to estimate that, by lowering family incomes alone, the ozone proposal would result in an increase in 4,250 to 5,667 deaths per year.]

A July 1996 study conducted for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases concluded that "the leading cause of asthma by far was . . . proteins in the droppings and carcasses of the German cockroach." The American Thoracic Society concluded in 1996 that "poverty may be the number one risk factor for asthma."

Browner's promise is a cruel hoax on families with asthmatics. EPA predicts that its proposal will reduce hospital admissions for asthma by no more than 0.6 percent, and will leave between 52 million and 89 million Americans in areas that will never reach the proposed standard. Moreover, no ozone standard other than a "zero" standard will eliminate ozone's aggravation of asthmatics who exercise outside.

Reported cases of asthma have been rising in all the industrialized nations, and have increased 45 percent in the United States in the last decade alone. Meanwhile, ozone levels have declined 6 percent between 1986 and 1995, according to EPA.