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Air Quality
The Environmental Protection Agency has
proposed stricter air quality standards (recently upheld by the Supreme Court) because an overwhelming body of scientific
evidence - more than 3,000 health studies - demonstrates that existing air quality
standards do not adequately protect Americans' health from smog and soot.
According to the EPA's 1996 National Air Quality Trends Report, three in
10 Americans still breathe unhealthy air, even though the Clean Air Act was passed more
than 20 years ago. Current levels of smog and soot in our nation's air are threatening
children with asthma and older Americans with heart and lung diseases, according to the
independent panel of scientists, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) that
reviewed 3,000 health studies conducted over the last 15 years before recommending the EPA
adopt stricter air quality standards. Studies confirm a direct relationship between
declines in air quality and increases in hospital admissions and emergency room visits for
respiratory problems, especially among the young and the elderly. For example: An American
Lung Association study of 13 cities found that hospitalization of people with asthma and
heart disease doubled during the summer, when smog is heaviest.
The Natural Resources Defense Council's
analysis of Harvard University data shows that soot in the air shortens the lives of
64,000 Americans annually. Lives are not just being shortened by days or weeks, but by an
average of one to two years in the most polluted areas. A Harvard study of summer camps
found that summertime pollution is linked to declines in lung function in all children,
even when smog levels were below presently acceptable levels. Researchers at Brigham Young
University discovered that when soot levels in the air rose, hospital admissions of
children with respiratory illnesses tripled. A study conducted by the UCLA School of
Medicine concluded that air pollution's damage to lung function resembles the damage done
by smoking tobacco.
Right now, more is known about the devastating health effects of soot on
people's lungs than was known thirty years ago when the U.S. Surgeon General first warned
Americans about the dangers of smoking tobacco. Sound and comprehensive scientific
research has concluded that more must be done, that stricter air quality standards must be
adopted to protect our families and our future.
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