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(ACC Mentioned) Industry, Enviros Split on Impact of Nanoscale Reporting
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Industry groups warned U.S. EPA this week that a planned reporting requirement for manufacturers of nanoscale materials could adversely impact companies, as some state agencies and environmental groups urged the agency to take a stricter approach to how it handles the emerging class of chemicals. -
German Institute’s Proposal for EDC Criteria Flawed, Says NGO
Aug 6, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment’s (BfR) proposal for setting criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals is “fundamentally flawed”, NGO CHEMTrust says. -
Purchasers Can Drive Move to Safer Chemicals, Says Report
Aug 6, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A department of the University of Massachusetts has released a report, exploring how purchasers can drive a marketplace for safer chemicals. -
OSHA Aims to Tighten Long-Stalled Beryllium Standard
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration today proposed tightening the level of beryllium that workers can be exposed to, after decades of studies have shown health problems at levels below the current limit. -
EPA Backs Up Carbon Rule Legal Argument in Memo
Aug 6, 2015 | PolitcoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
EPA in a new legalmemorandum outlines its arguments on several aspects of its power plant carbon rules likely to be challenged in court. -
EPA Proposes Updates to Regional Consistency Regs
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
U.S. EPA is proposing changes to its policy requiring that regional offices put in place Clean Air Act regulations consistently across the country. -
Power Plant CO2 Emissions Hit 27-Year Low -- DOE
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants hit a 27-year low in April, the Department of Energy said yesterday. -
National Mining's Quinn Previews Legal Strategy Following Rule Rollout
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - TV
How will changes to Building Block 1 of the Clean Power Plan, and a lowering of standards in U.S. EPA's rule for new sources, impact future growth for the coal industry? -
EPA Foes Turned Asthma Study Into Weapon for Ozone Fight
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
When a Johns Hopkins University researcher published a study showing race and income as risk factors for asthma, she started getting phone calls from industry groups opposing U.S. EPA's bid to tighten the national ozone standard.
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry, Enviros Split on Impact of Nanoscale Reporting
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sam Pearson
Industry groups warned U.S. EPA this week that a planned reporting requirement for manufacturers of nanoscale materials could adversely impact companies, as some state agencies and environmental groups urged the agency to take a stricter approach to how it handles the emerging class of chemicals.
EPA is considering a proposed rule calling for reporting of nanoscale materials data under a previously unused application of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. Companies would be required on a one-time basis to submit exposure and health and safety information on nanoscale materials, generally classified as having chemical structures 800 to 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
While some environment and public health groups warned that even the new EPA action may not do enough to protect the public, industry groups in public comments warned that a poorly crafted rule could unfairly burden companies.
The proposed rule should be withdrawn because it "does not appear to be sufficiently focused to provide relevant useful information to evaluate the safety of nanoscale materials," wrote John DiLoreto, executive director of the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates' Nanotechnology Coalition.
DiLoreto added that "the random information EPA seeks in the notice provides no rational basis to obtain this information."
The disclosure requirement must also ensure that nanomaterials are defined to distinguish novel technologies "from established industries with known products, processes and risks," the Color Pigments Manufacturers Association Inc. said.
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But some groups warned the reporting requirement may not be sufficient to ensure the safety of nanomaterials.
In fact, EPA should consider requiring ongoing reporting of health and safety data, the Washington State Department of Ecology said.
Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote that the agency should consider proposing a significant new use rule requiring agency notification of new applications of covered nanoscale materials. In addition, EPA should adopt language "to acknowledge that nanoscale is a legitimate criterion for hazard and exposure potential," Denison wrote.
"Wide data gaps remain with respect to both exposure to and toxicity of nanoscale materials," he wrote.
EDF and the California Department of Public Health also argued in comments that EPA should define nanoscale materials as new chemicals under TSCA, rather than as existing chemicals, as is the current practice. A designation as new chemicals could subject nanoscale materials to greater safety review.
EPA, in its proposed rule, noted that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has found that nanomaterials can exhibit properties different from other substances by virtue of their small size, thereby requiring greater scrutiny from federal regulators.
The proposed information collection is the first step, the agency has said, in understanding whether nanomaterials should be subject to safety requirements greater than those applied to other materials.
The action comes in the wake of a voluntary 2009 program, the Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program, that some groups criticized for providing EPA with only limited information after few companies participated.
At a meeting earlier this year, Steve Gordon, a toxicologist at 3M Co. and a member of the American Chemistry Council's Nanotechnology Panel, warned that agency action was "not justified on the basis of risk and could have the effect of stigmatizing nanomaterials" (E&ENews PM, June 11).
A 90-day public comment period was supposed to close last month, but EPA extended it for an additional 30 days -- until yesterday.
According to its most recent Unified Agenda, EPA intends to finalize the nanoscale reporting rule by June 2016.
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German Institute’s Proposal for EDC Criteria Flawed, Says NGO
Aug 6, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment’s (BfR) proposal for setting criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals is “fundamentally flawed”, NGO CHEMTrust says.
The BfR proposal (CW 4 June 2015) calls for additional criteria to be added to one of the options being considered by the European Commission. This suggests assessing the potency of endocrine disruptors in terms of their hormonal impact (CW 18 June 2014).
The BfR criteria are:the severity and reversibility of adverse health effects, including the possibility of complete recovery;the specificity of the hormonal properties of a substance against the background of further possible properties; andconsistency, such as the scientific traceability of the studies.
The institute says that including the additional criteria will “serve as a template" for classifying substances into one of three categories:hormonally active substance;suspected endocrine disruptor; andendocrine disruptor.
However, including potency based cut-offs as a filter mechanism would mean that only “highly potent” EDCs would be identified for regulatory purposes, CHEMTrust says in a statement.
The BfR and the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) made a recommendation for setting criteria for EDCs in 2011. The BfR says this earlier approach only considered potency and a specific dose level, based on the specific target organ toxicity repeated exposure (STOT-RE) classification.
CHEMTrust says the new proposal is "basically a re-introduction of the original, underpinned by a paper it [BfR] published in December 2014, looking into approaches for regulatory decision making on pesticides with ED properties".
The BfR counters that its new proposal is not the same as that put forward with the UK's HSE.
Roland Solecki, head of the BfR’s chemical safety department, says: “The difference… is that the first one was considering only potency and a specific dose level based on the STOT-RE classification, and the new one is based on the discussion of the last years, including the proposal of professor Kortenkamp to include a complex decision matrix.”
CHEMTrust’s Ninja Reinke says it is not criticising the use of a “decision matrix” in itself, but it is opposed to using one that mixes regulatory decisions with the scientific identification of an endocrine disruptor.
“The main purpose of the criteria is to ensure that all EDCs are identified so that the rules of various laws can be applied,” she says. She adds that the WHO/IPCS EDC definition does not include potency, severity or (ir)reversibility considerations, but requires endocrine disruptor activity, an adverse effect, and a plausible link between the two.
“Prioritisation, based on other characteristics, can be carried out later,” she says.
However, BfR says that, provided substances have undergone comprehensive evaluation, current testing and assessment methodologies are generally suitable to derive dose/concentration levels, which can be considered safe – although absolute certainty may not be guaranteed.
Dr Solecki says: “There is no convincing evidence to assume that levels of uncertainty are generally different, regarding endocrine disruptors as compared to other toxic substances. Based on considerations on potency in combination with specificity, severity, reversibility and consistency of effect, it is possible to allocate substances falling under the WHO/IPCS definition.”
Last month, the European Commission published a report, summarising last year's consultation on its proposals for setting EDC criteria. A total of 863 organisations and around 21,000 citizens commented (CW 28 July 2015).
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Purchasers Can Drive Move to Safer Chemicals, Says Report
Aug 6, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
A department of the University of Massachusetts has released a report, exploring how purchasers can drive a marketplace for safer chemicals.
According to the study by the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, lagging US regulation of chemicals “creates an opportunity" for those who make purchasing policies and decisions to increase the uptake of safer alternatives.
The report notes several examples of how purchasing powers have led to marketplace shifts, and describes the challenges that await purchasers developing chemical management programmes.
“As an increasing number of policies, standards and consumer pressures augment the demand for safer products, purchasers will increasingly need to know how to integrate consideration of chemical ingredients, hazards and alternatives into their purchasing decisions,” it says.
Entitled Advancing safer chemicals in products: the key role of purchasing, the report explores, in case studies, how the following organisations have implemented programmes to screen out chemicals that pose potential environmental and health risks:Kaiser Permanente, which maintains a chemical score card for reducing toxic exposure to workers and patients;Seattle City Light, which promotes the use of safer alternatives to products or substances that may be hazardous;Perkins+Will, which hosts a publicly available transparency website, identifying 25 substances of concern in building products and how to select safer alternatives;Coop, a Danish retailer which is working to remove chemicals of concern from store brands;Oregon Environmental Council, which engages with the public and private companies to find ways to implement policies that encourage safer products; andNational Institutes of Health, which is developing a process to make it easier to buy safer products.
The report summarises lessons learned from chemical management policies and stresses the importance of:developing an understanding of potential hazards, and prioritising how to address those risks;setting specific goals and monitoring their progress;establishing policies that address a wide range of chemicals and sources of exposure;engaging with suppliers to better understand alternatives; anddevoting sufficient resources to executing a well-thought-out programme.
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OSHA Aims to Tighten Long-Stalled Beryllium Standard
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration today proposed tightening the level of beryllium that workers can be exposed to, after decades of studies have shown health problems at levels below the current limit.
Beryllium, a component of nuclear weapons, was supposed to see OSHA action in 1975, but the Energy and Defense departments opposed a proposal to tighten the exposure limit.
Construction workers exposed to beryllium in trace amounts would not be covered under the proposed rule. The agency said it's seeking comment on whether those workers should be included.
The OSHA proposal would reduce the existing 2-microgram limit for an eight-hour exposure to 0.2 microgram and mandate medical exams for exposed workers and other requirements. The agency said the rule could prevent nearly 100 deaths and 50 illnesses per year.
"This proposal will save lives and help thousands of workers stay healthy and be more productive on the job," Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said (Jamie Smith Hopkins, Center for Public Integrity, Aug. 5). -- SP
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EPA Backs Up Carbon Rule Legal Argument in Memo
Aug 6, 2015 | PolitcoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
EPA in a new legalmemorandum outlines its arguments on several aspects of its power plant carbon rules likely to be challenged in court.
The memo, posted yesterday, expands on arguments laid out in EPA’s 1,500-page final rule to defend the agency’s decision to use “beyond the fence line” measures and its state emission goals. EPA argues its state goals are not binding in and of themselves, but instead provide EPA with a metric to determine whether state plans are adequate.
EPA also rejects arguments that using “beyond the fence line” measures would lead to increasingly “intrusive controls” should it similarly regulate other major emitters, such as refineries.
State goals must be able to be achieved by the power plants themselves, one reason energy efficiency was dropped as part of the rate-setting formula, though states are free to explore a number of strategies to comply, EPA says in the memo.
The agency argues that electricity suppliers and consumers are integrated far more than in the transportation fuel sector, and that efforts to reduce domestic demand for gasoline may not translate into emissions reductions because refineries could simply sell more fuel overseas.
And EPA rejects federalism arguments, saying that they “rest on fundamental misunderstandings or inaccurate descriptions of the Clean Air Act, this rule, and the applicable case law.” -
EPA Proposes Updates to Regional Consistency Regs
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
U.S. EPA is proposing changes to its policy requiring that regional offices put in place Clean Air Act regulations consistently across the country.
According to the proposal, EPA would provide for exemptions where federal court rulings apply locally or regionally and could affect the consistent application of air rules nationwide. The proposal would update EPA's "regional consistency" regulations put into place in 1980.
The changes would provide the agency "the flexibility to implement CAA programs on a national scale while also minimizing delay in implementing court rulings," EPA said in a fact sheet yesterday.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy signed the proposal yesterday; it will be published in theFederal Register soon and will be subject to a public comment period.
The rulemaking stems from a December 2012 memorandum in which EPA said it would practice "intercircuit nonacquiescence," a term used to describe a federal court action that applies only in the area under the jurisdiction of the court.
The memo itself arose out of a federal court ruling that vacated a permitting decision by EPA Region 5. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that EPA couldn't consider a natural gas plant and associated wells as a single source under the Clean Air Act's operating permit program if they weren't adjacent to each other.
EPA's memo, known as the "Summit Directive," stated that it would not follow the court decision outside of the 6th Circuit.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the memo last year on a challenge from the National Environmental Development Association's Clean Air Project, finding that it ran counter to EPA's 1980 rules that require agency regions to put in place regulations in a "fair and consistent" manner.
"If the proposed revisions to the Regional Consistency regulations are finalized," EPA said yesterday, "it will be clear that an adverse federal court decision in a case regarding locally or regionally applicable actions does not apply nationwide."
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Power Plant CO2 Emissions Hit 27-Year Low -- DOE
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants hit a 27-year low in April, the Department of Energy said yesterday.
The drop is likely the result of the long-term shift from coal to natural gas, Energy Department economist Allen McFarland said. Other experts say renewable fuels and energy efficiency are also a factor.
In April, electric power plants released 141 million tons of carbon dioxide, the lowest level since April 1988, DOE said.
Though experts have debated whether the emissions decline is the result of a sluggish U.S. economy or of more lasting changes to the energy sector, McFarland said the drop was too significant to be due to the economy alone.
"You don't have a 27-year low because of an economic blip," McFarland said. "There are more things happening than that" (AP/Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 5). -- SP
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National Mining's Quinn Previews Legal Strategy Following Rule Rollout
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - TV
How will changes to Building Block 1 of the Clean Power Plan, and a lowering of standards in U.S. EPA's rule for new sources, impact future growth for the coal industry? During today's OnPoint, Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association, discusses the impact of the rules on his industry and previews his organization's plans for fighting the Clean Power Plan in the courts.Transcript
Monica Trauzzi: Hello, and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today is Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association. Hal, thank you for coming on the show.
Hal Quinn: Well, thank you, Monica. It's good to be here.
Monica Trauzzi: Hal, U.S. EPA's final Clean Power Plan is more -- is a more aggressive standard, in many ways, to its draft proposal, but at the same time, the agency also acknowledged many of the stakeholder concerns that were raised during the public comment period. What positive steps -- let's start with positives. What positive steps did the agency make from draft to final?
Hal Quinn: Well, I think the only one that -- we're still looking through it, 1,500 pages, one paragraph out of a law, then it's been 1,500 pages in a regulation. So I think for some stakeholders, the -- pushing back the time frame two years is a welcome for them, but in our view, you know, these are changes that are without much difference at all, at the end of the day.
Monica Trauzzi: So Building Block 1 was adjusted in, what one could argue, your industry's favor. How will a relaxing in coal unit efficiency benefit your industry?
Hal Quinn: Well, it won't because what they've done is when they give on one building block, they take away from other building blocks, so they did away with efficiency, demand-side efficiency, that might have helped some of the coal-fired power plants. But the fact of the matter is, it's really a zero-sum game, and as you noted, they actually increased the stringency of the rule from its proposed form.
Monica Trauzzi: Which states are you most concerned about?
Hal Quinn: Well, I think if you look at any state with low-cost electricity, those are the states, as you're gonna find, are gonna be the most heavily punished, and they're the ones that, when you look at the changes from the proposed to the final, they're the ones who have, in some cases, stringencies that are increased twofold, and some by 50 percent. So most of those states have low-cost coal power, and they're the ones who are gonna get punished the most.
Monica Trauzzi: You say "punished" -- you use the word punished, but states are able to craft their own plans, and they have a range of options at their disposal to create a plan that works for them. So can't they craft a plan, a mechanism that will work for them and not see a rate increase?
Hal Quinn: No. I mean, I don't even think EPA would indicate that somehow you can comply with this rule and not see a rate increase. What this rule's designed to do is to take off low-cost electricity off the grid and replace it with more expensive sources. That's why you're gonna see these incentives for renewables and so forth. So, you know, the message in this rule is low-cost electricity is not welcome. That's not part of our energy future or energy security going forward.
Monica Trauzzi: According to the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, the electric power sector emitted 128 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in April 2015, the lowest for any month since April 1988, and that is linked to a decline in generation from coal and natural gas. So to get to where the U.S. needs to be in terms of reducing emissions, isn't a continued decrease in coal and natural gas necessary?
Hal Quinn: No. I mean, I think if you're gonna really -- if you're concerned about climate, then you're really gonna have to look at some technology solutions, and carbon capture is one of them, but it's not just a coal technology. It's a fossil fuel technology. In terms of decreases, most of the decreases in emissions from 2007 in this country are really -- probably 80, 85 percent are driven by the recession and a very tepid recovery.
Monica Trauzzi: Administrator McCarthy says every fuel will have a seat at the table with this plan. Coal will hold 27 percent of the market in 2030, according to this plan. So doesn't her statement hold true? Everyone has a seat at the table here, and your folks will also have a big seat at the table.
Hal Quinn: Well, you know, if we're given a seat at the table, watch a very diverse, robust electric group be dismantled, that's something we don't really wanna be there to witness. You know, the IHS Energy last year did a study that showed that the diverse grid we have saves consumers $93 billion a year. And that's what we're seeing being dismantled, rule by rule, mercury rule being the first one, and that's really a down payment on carbon and now this Clean Power Plan.
Monica Trauzzi: They've included a reliability safety valve in the rule. Are you not confident that that's something that would work?
Hal Quinn: Well, let me put it this way. If you have a product that you have to put a safety valve on, that means probably the product is inherently unsafe. So I think by the time you reach to push that button, you already have trouble, and the question is, why wouldn't you design a policy that would avoid the situation in the first instance?
Monica Trauzzi: NMA has filed for a stay on the rule with EPA. Is that considered a long-shot option for you?
Hal Quinn: Well, it's a prerequisite. So we filed an administrative request for a stay. We don't see any reason why they couldn't grant it. There wouldn't be any harm to the environment. Let's admit -- they even admit their -- the impacts on climate from this rule are going to be negligible. But we filed it, and if they decline, we'll be seeking one from the courts.
Monica Trauzzi: Right. So beyond this administrative stay, what are your legal steps? Walk me through them.
Hal Quinn: Well, the first step will be when they publish the rule in the Federal Register. We will file our legal challenge to the rule, and we expect many states to join in filing their legal challenges. We will then also, at the same time, file with the court a request for a stay of the rule pending judicial review.
Monica Trauzzi: And will you see expedited consideration?
Hal Quinn: Well, if we have a stay, we won't need expedited consideration, but if a stay is not granted, then certainly we will see expedited review as we have in the past.
Monica Trauzzi: We were talking before the show about what we might see Congress do. What are your expectations for congressional action on this, and will any of it actually have any legs?
Hal Quinn: Well, it will have some legs. We'll see if it ever gets down to Pennsylvania Avenue. We have -- the "Ratepayer Protection Act" was passed in the House last month, which stayed the rule pending judicial review as well as give governors an option of opting out if this rule threatens reliability and the low-cost electricity they have in their state. Today the Senate Energy Committee's considering Senator Capito's legislation called the "ARENA Act," which has similar provisions. So those are two things that are moving, and I suspect that maybe at some point you'll see later in the year a congressional resolution to -- that would vote down the rule in the House and the Senate.
Monica Trauzzi: All items that potentially do not have the votes to pass.
Hal Quinn: They might not pass completely, but at the same time, we also have many governors looking at this regulation very closely, deciding is this something they wanna participate in. So all this all comes together in terms of outcry of concern about the -- about this policy.
Monica Trauzzi: Let's talk about the new unit rule that was also released on Monday. There was a bit of a relaxing of the standards there. How could that affect the potential for future growth in your industry?
Hal Quinn: Well, what they did was they did lower the emission rate. Well, the emission rate was actually increased for a new coal unit, but it still requires 20 percent capture of carbon, so before it was 40, now it's 20. Forty wasn't technologically proven, and 20 isn't either, so it's sort of a nudge. It's really a head fake, and it seems to me that if you were gonna look at carbon capture and demonstrate it, you'd probably do 40 rather than 20 anyway because you're gonna get economies of scale. It'll be more expensive, but over the longer run, it'd be economies of scale. So I don't really see that as somehow making that a more viable solution right now, as opposed to, if they really wanted to decrease emissions from new coal units is allow a high-emission -- a high-efficiency, low-emission units, like ultra-supercritical coal, set the standard at that level.
Monica Trauzzi: So what's the state of play, then, on carbon capture and storage technology? Is kind of all hope lost for an economically viable CCS solution?
Hal Quinn: No, I think if technology, the research continues and we get some demonstration projects, but we're -- but the policies are getting way out in front of what's technologically and economically feasible, and I think that's really starting to turn people off about whether it's really worth pursuing at this point in time, which would be very unfortunate 'cause it is a longer-term solution.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, we're gonna end it there. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for your thoughts.
Hal Quinn: Thank you, Monica.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
[End of Audio]
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EPA Foes Turned Asthma Study Into Weapon for Ozone Fight
Aug 6, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka
When a Johns Hopkins University researcher published a study showing race and income as risk factors for asthma, she started getting phone calls from industry groups opposing U.S. EPA's bid to tighten the national ozone standard.
Dr. Corinne Keet said her newfound fans wanted to use her work to show EPA's ozone proposal wouldn't yield public health benefits.
A pediatrician who specializes in allergies, Keet is not an air pollution expert. Her study published in January in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology didn't even mention ozone.
Corinne Keet, assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. Photo courtesy of Johns Hopkins University.
"It's been an interesting education for me in terms of how research is interpreted," Keet said in an interview. "I was called by consultants for industry to discuss the results in terms of looking for ways of suggesting that either genetic factors or poverty rather than pollution are important things for asthma."
EPA has proposed tightening the national air quality standard for ozone -- a component of smog -- to between 65 and 70 parts per billion from 75 ppb set by the George W. Bush administration in 2008. Based on a scientific review, EPA said the 75 ppb limit was no longer adequate to protect public health as the Clean Air Act requires.
Industry groups and congressional Republicans oppose the EPA proposal, arguing that ozone isn't a significant factor in whether people develop asthma and citing Keet's study. The bottom line in aggressive media ads and messaging on Capitol Hill: Asthma rates are rising even while air pollution levels are falling.
Their campaign targets the Obama administration's assertion that a tighter ozone standard will help reduce hospital visits and other health care costs tied to asthma.
"When they start saying 'asthma,' of course that's a very compelling story. And the administration likes to tout that," said Howard Feldman, director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute. "That's not necessarily borne out by all the information, the science out there. The trends are not there."
Public health advocates, on the other hand, maintain that foes of the tougher pollution standard conflate two different issues: asthma prevalence -- whether a person develops asthma -- and asthma exacerbation, whether someone who has asthma experiences an attack.
Environmental and health groups want a tougher ozone standard than what the administration proposed because it would improve life for people who have asthma and other respiratory diseases.
The Sierra Club, for example, in April launched a campaign meant to highlight "the challenges of being the working parent of a child with asthma" to coincide with Take Your Child to Work Day.
"We don't know what causes asthma, but we do know what triggers asthma attacks -- indoor pollutants, allergies, and we know that ozone is one of those triggers," said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association. "It makes people vulnerable to some of those other triggers as well. Ozone's a powerful respiratory irritant, and people with asthma have sensitive lungs."'Huge mess of things'
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 18.9 million American adults and 7.1 million children have asthma, according to a 2011 national survey.
Between 2001 and 2011, the CDC says, the number of Americans with asthma increased 28 percent.
Despite its prevalence, asthma remains a difficult health problem for researchers. What's commonly called asthma can involve a number of symptoms. And there's no single cause; whether a person develops asthma is likely the result of a confluence of factors.
But there's plenty of research tying exposure to ozone to worsening symptoms in asthma sufferers. A study published in March in the journal Environmental Health found that ambient ozone levels were associated with childhood asthma emergency room visits but that the relationships varied among boys and girls, as well as age groups.
David Peden, director of the University of North Carolina's Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma and Lung Biology, said studies have so far shown no "absolute cutoff" for what level of ozone pollution harms asthmatics given that some people may have exacerbations at lower concentrations. But, he said, he had "very little doubt" that levels of ozone between 60 and 75 ppb could cause asthma attacks.
Peden has authored several studies on how air pollution affects public health, many of which have been funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and EPA.
"Increased levels of ozone can sometimes sneak up on you," Peden said in an interview. "People know they're having an asthma worsening and may not appreciate that they're getting exposed to something that might be causing a very subtle irritation of the airway."
Public health groups have highlighted those connections in their campaigns calling for an ozone standard of no higher than 60 ppb. The American Lung Association, for example, has framed its campaign around kids wanting to play outside and their inability to do so when air pollution levels are high, particularly when children have asthma.
"We can do a lot to help patients manage their asthma. We can give them medication, they can use their devices correctly, but we can't control the ambient air," the association's Billings said. "Only through the power of collective action, through government, can we force the polluters to clean up and reduce that burden."
EPA says reducing ozone pollution to between 65 and 70 ppb would prevent between 750 and 4,300 premature deaths, between 1,400 and 4,300 asthma-related emergency room visits, and between 320,000 and 960,000 asthma attacks in children yearly by 2025. Taking into account reduced asthma attacks, EPA estimated that the benefits of the ozone rule would outweigh costs 3-1.
Industry, meanwhile, has focused its messaging on where the science is less certain: ozone's role in causing people to get asthma.
There's emerging evidence that air pollution has played a role in the upward trend in asthma cases over the last decade but it's likely one of a "huge mess of things," said Mary Rice, an instructor of medicine at Harvard University's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
"More doctors are aware of asthma, pollen seasons are longer, obesity, nutrition, diet, air pollution could be in the mix," Rice said. "Most studies suggest that [air pollution] contributes to the risk of asthma, but it's only one risk factor among many, many things that can contribute."
EPA acknowledges the recent research on air pollution triggers for asthma in the scientific documents underlying the rule, but the agency confined its benefits analysis to asthma attacks.
Industry, however, has accused the Obama administration and public health groups of overselling the ties between ozone pollution and asthma prevalence.
"Air quality has been increasing, pollution has been decreasing, things are getting better and asthma's getting worse," said Daniel Simmons, vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a conservative think tank that's partly funded by the Koch brothers. "You have this disconnect."
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, one of EPA's biggest critics, has long questioned the agency's conclusions about asthma.
In its newsletter last October, the commission said it concluded that human volunteers exposed to ozone showed similar lung effects in asthmatics and in non-asthmatics, and that children were no more sensitive to ozone than young adults. The state pointed to increasing asthma admission rates in Texas as its proof.
"If asthma were actually tied to ozone, you would expect to see the instances of asthma decreasing, not increasing," the newsletter said. "In fact, data from Texas hospitals show that asthma admissions are actually highest in the winter, when ozone levels are the lowest."'Erroneous conclusion'
The study by Johns Hopkins' Keets examined 23,065 children and found that race and income were risk factors for asthma, regardless of whether a child lived in an urban or rural area.
"Although the prevalence of asthma is high in some U.S. inner cities, it is equally high in some poor nonurban areas," the study found. "Taking the United States as a whole, living in an urban neighborhood is not associated with increased asthma prevalence."
The study was supported by EPA, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Cancer Institute.
Shortly after the study's publication in January, at least two opponents of EPA's proposal to tighten the national ozone standard touted its results as disproving EPA's claims about asthma.
In blog posts, IER and the Heartland Institute said the study showed that asthma prevalence was not higher in urban areas, where air pollution was typically more of a problem.
They argued that EPA's proposal, by imposing high compliance costs, could actually increase asthma prevalence by making people poorer.
"In light of this new evidence, EPA should rescind its proposed ozone rule," IER wrote. "This rule could exacerbate the public health problem it is trying to mitigate and impose enormous economic burdens on American families. Moreover, ozone levels are already declining without further regulation, obviating the need for more federal mandates."
Keet said such arguments are a "distortion" of her research team's findings.
In March, she wrote to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in an attempt to set the record straight. In her letter, she noted that the study did not examine air pollution and that living in an urban area should not be taken as a surrogate for high exposures to pollution.
"This study's finding has been misinterpreted by some who believe that it suggests that air pollution in general, and ozone in particular, is not important for asthma," she wrote. "This is an erroneous conclusion."
Still, the study was the subject of an intense exchange between in June between Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) and Johns Hopkins University air pollution researcher Gregory Diette at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Diette had been testifying that the science dictated that EPA set a lower ozone limit. McKinley -- whose son has asthma -- asked Diette to account for the Keet study.
"This report, Dr. Diette, from your Johns Hopkins institution, they have come out with a report themselves just recently and said they can't find a connection," McKinley said. "They say there is no statistical difference between the rates of asthma attacks in high-pollution areas than in non-pollution areas."
Diette shot back: "Just so it is clear, the conclusion of the study is not what you said it was."
As recently as last month, IER cited the study in a blog post that attempted to discredit the Obama administration's health claims used to justify the Clean Power Plan.
Simmons acknowledged that the authors of the study have disputed the group's interpretation of its results but said the findings still raised a "very important question" about the links between ozone and asthma.
"It looked at asthma in inner cities and asthma in the suburbs, and there was not a statistically meaningful difference," he said. "The inference that we drew from that is, don't you have more air pollution in inner cities than you do in the suburbs?"
Several researchers also suggested that industry is focusing on an area where the science is still unsettled -- what causes a person to have asthma -- and not on the part of the question where the science is more certain -- whether ozone increases the likelihood of attacks in people who already have asthma.
"The discussion of asthma going up is confusing the issue of the prevalence of asthma, meaning how many people develop the disease versus the disease course, so how sick the people who have asthma get," said Harvard's Rice, who was grilled about the asthma-ozone link by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) at a recent hearing.
"At this point," Rice said, "there's very strong evidence to show that exposure to higher levels of ozone increases the risk of asthma attacks. I would say dozens, perhaps even hundreds of studies show that when ozone goes up, people who have asthma get sicker."
Some critics of EPA's scientific analysis argue, though, that there's also more uncertainty in the science linking asthma exacerbation and ozone than EPA is portraying.
"I don't think EPA fully takes into account uncertainties and other explanations for asthma exacerbations," said Julie Goodman, a principal at the consulting firm Gradient who has done ozone research for Texas and API. "Several things trigger asthma attacks, and it's very difficult to tease out what causes them in an epidemiology study."
Goodman is working on a paper that she said will prove the weight of evidence suggests the tighter standard won't have an impact on the number of asthma attacks.
"At certain exposure levels, ozone can exacerbate asthma. The question isn't whether it can," Goodman said. "The question is at what exposure level this happens and will lowering the standard have any additional health benefit. ... We conclude that the current standard is sufficient to protect public health."'Something that resonates with anyone with a heart'
One area of agreement: Asthma is a powerful way to sell a new ozone standard, given how many Americans are affected by the disease.
Although ozone pollution has also been linked to premature death, Rice said focusing on asthma is a more real way to portray the dangers of ozone to humans.
"I think that as the risk of death goes up, it's harder for people to get their heads around than an asthma attack," Rice said.
EPA has also used asthma to attempt to coalesce support for its Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.
"We can all think of children with asthma and just how hopeless we feel. You see a child struggling and you want to help the child," IER's Simmons said. "So asthma is something that resonates with anyone with a heart."
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