Green campaigners: EPA is a White House puppet

Air pollution laws in the US have been tightened, but green campaigners are still unhappy.

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that new standards for ground-level ozone, the main component of smog, restrict the gas to 0.075 parts per million (ppm).

However, environmental groups have accused the US government of pushing the EPA into making the standard less strict than they would have liked. EPA’s scientests recommended that the maximum level of the gas should be set at under 0.070 ppm.

Furthermore, the White House has been accused of telling the EPA to lift a second standard that was designed to protect soil, forests, and crops from air pollution.

Vickie Patton, a former lawyer for the EPA who now works for the Environmental Defense Fund, said: “The White House today cast aside science and law to impose its will upon EPA, leaving America’s health and environment behind.”

The president of Clean Air Watch, Frank O’Donnell, added: “The Bush Administration is compromising public health to save industry money.

“EPA documents show that public health benefits would be far greater under tougher standards recommended by the science advisers.”

However, the White House denies that the government has broken the law. Spokesperson Tony Fratto said: “What we were trying to do on the smog decision was try to have a decision that was consistent with our interpretation of the statute.

“This was not a weakening of regulations or standards governing ozone, but it was an effort to make those standards consistent.

“What we were dealing with was more of a technical matter on the secondary standard, that would monitor the public welfare benefit of reducing particulate matter. And it’s a different standard.

“We sought advice from the Justice Department, as you would expect us to do, in how to carry out our decision on that. And that’s what we did, and we did it conforming with the law.”

The Clean Air Act requires that the EPA reviews the ozone standards twice per decade.