The U.S. House of Representatives is poised to vote today on the “Smoggy Skies Act” (HR 4775), the latest in a string of attempts by polluter-backed members of Congress to weaken the Clean Air Act and its science based health protections in order to appease fossil fuel companies that make their profits by sacrificing public health.
The bill not only delays implementation of the new smog pollution standard by up to eight years, but also opens the door to unraveling the health and science-based underpinnings of the Clean Air Act. Among the bill’s most egregious provisions is its delay of how frequently air pollution safeguards are reviewed, from the current standard of every 5 years to every 10 years -- basically chipping away at the ability of the law to ensure our clean air protections are up to date with the latest medical science. Letting a decade pass between updates of this bedrock air pollution standard is an eternity in the world of health science and innovation.
The timing of the bill’s attack on protections against smog pollution is especially distressing since summer is right around the corner -- when the heat causes air pollution levels to spike and families are most vulnerable to its negative health effects, like causing asthma and heart attacks. Hundreds of thousands of families across the country, mine included, depend on the smog pollution standard every year to inform them about whether or not it is OK to send their kids to the park or for seniors to spend time outside. Weakening the standard will literally put lives at risk.
Smog pollution sends thousands of children to the emergency room each year and costs Americans billions in health care costs, lost productivity, and even premature deaths. According to the American Lung Association (ALA), inhaling smog pollution is like getting a sunburn on your lungs and often results in immediate breathing trouble. Long-term exposure to smog pollution is linked to chronic respiratory diseases like asthma, reproductive and developmental harm, and can exacerbate severe illness for people with pre-existing conditions.
Smog pollution also disproportionately affects communities of color. Analyses of U.S. populations and air quality have found that African Americans and Latinos were more likely to live in counties that had worse problems with particle pollution. African Americans were also more likely to live in counties with higher levels of smog pollution, have nearly two times the rate of current asthma as white children, and are four times as likely to die from it.
This Smoggy Skies Act will only make these problems worse. The EPA’s decision to strengthen the smog pollution standard last year was a step in the right direction, but it didn’t guarantee that every community would be free from dangerous levels of smog pollution. The Smoggy Skies Act aims to not only erase that step forward, but also weaken the standard further through its added giveaways to big polluters who don’t want to be held accountable for the lives they endanger -- forcing our families to pay the price instead.
Responsible members of the House of Representatives, who care about the health of young children and seniors, must vote against this bill. Unraveling the very fabric of the Clean Air Act is simply unacceptable, and it’s astonishing that legislators would even consider it. Clean air is a right that should not be sold to the highest bidder, but protected at all cost from big polluters and their backers in Congress. The House of Representatives should vote down the Smoggy Skies Act.