The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, long criticized for its flawed analyses based on bad science - and even worse political infighting and cronyism - now seems to be making a complete about-face.
Criticisms extend back to 1999, with Mark Powell of Resources for the Future (RFF), a Washington, D.C., think tank, examining in minute and painful detail how the agency tends to ignore its own scientists, leading to a situation where officials make decisions based more on lobbying interests than the underlying, if sometimes confusing, facts.
EPA criticisms run the gamut from the graft surrounding the failed Superfund program to vehicle pollution and pesticide testing rules. More recently, under newly appointed EPA head Lisa Jackson, however, the EPA has developed new scientific methods to evaluate the toxicity of chemicals used in by American companies in their manufacturing processes.
This March 25 document, which the EPA describes as a "long-range vision for toxicity testing and risk assessment", will allow the EPA to quickly, effectively and humanely screen thousands of chemicals for their potential to cause harm to humans, animals or the environment - and reportedly without using animals as test subjects.
The truth, as always, is a little more complicated. What the EPA promises to do is use fewer animals in in vivo (live) testing, or at least use the animals it tests (and the science behind testing) more efficiently. The caveat is that "implementing the new approach will require significant institutional investment in operational and organizational transition and in public outreach".
The first part is easy enough to translate: more money. The second, a little more obscure, suggests more human testing, or am I reading that wrong? Finally, the EPA will incorporate data from epidemiological studies like the National Children's Study to evaluate impacts of chemicals on youth populations, as opposed to merely adult populations.
EPA officials admit that the transition - away from animal testing, and toward the larger demographic of children and adults, may take as much as two decades to perfect. Still, it's a good start. We all know that children are more often affected by chemical pollution, and to a more detrimental extent, than adults, so the EPA's new focus will improve child health in the U.S.
In another, equally relevant, about-face, the EPA is set to start regulating maritime emissions. According to Jackson's March 30 press conference, this regulation will take the form of cutting sulfur in fuel by 98 percent, particulate emissions from burning fuel by 85 percent, and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80 percent.
Nitrogen oxide emissions are currently the chief culprit in ozone destruction. Without the ozone layer, which got a 1987 reprieve via the Montreal protocol restricting or banning CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), more solar radiation reaches earth, leading to skin cancer, cataracts, mutations and acid rain.
The EPA's proposal is phased in: marine fuel with less than 1,000 parts per million of sulfur beginning in 2015, and newly constructed ships equipped with advanced emission-control technologies by 2016.
The proposal still faces UN review (not mandatory) and U.S. government approval, but if passed (presumably in 2010) would mean cleaner air for the rest of us, especially those living near America's 360 shipping ports, and slightly elevated costs for importers and exporters. The UK is likely to follow suit.
If this sea change seems a little abrupt (pun intended), keep in mind that the EPA, as recently as November of 2008, took two rules out of circulation that would have weakened the Clean Air Act. Apparently, EPA officials realized which way the wind was blowing (another egregious pun) and decided to tow then President-elect Barack Obama's party line of clean air and clean energy.
Hopefully, enough EPA officials have converted to the "new clean" to keep the agency on its current track, at least until 2012 when the Kyoto protocols come due. And this clearly is the case in view of the new EPA ruling on carbon dioxide (CO2), which declares the global warming gas a danger to public health.
This visible departure from the Bush era, when the EPA said that CO2 could not be regulated because it was not a pollutant, sets a new tone for the EPA - one which it may find difficult to consistently duplicate, but which is essential to cleaning up America after eight years of Republican oil and gas favoritism.
Lastly, the EPA has shown its support of Obama's cap-and-trade policies by performing an initial audit that suggests the cost to American families might be as little as $98 per year (without modeling the effects of complementary renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency standards). This also assumes carbon credits are not giveaways to industry but returned to the people.
Other good stuff on Celsias:
The Green FDR: Obama's First 100 Days Make-- and May Remake-- History
A New Hope
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