Activists Say Industrial Chemical Limits Are ‘Weakest’ Part of Clean Air Package

Air pollution experts and environmental groups Monday called President Bush’s plan for reducing emissions of life-threatening industrial chemicals “the weakest” part of his environmental package, complaining it will take too long to implement and may allow many dangerous toxins to go unregulated.

Industry groups, however, cautiously praised the plan, saying it will give them a say in creating new regulations and will give more flexibility to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“(The plan) appears to have a lot of flexibility in it, and that’s good but we still don’t know how a lot of these pieces fit together,” said Theresa Pugh, a director of the National Assn. of Manufacturers.

Bush’s plan is designed to reduce industrial emissions that now are blamed for as many as 3,000 deaths and an unknown number of birth defects and health problems each year. At least 2.7 billion pounds of toxic chemicals, many of them carcinogens, are released into the nation’s environment each year by industry.

Current Law

Under the current law, these life-threatening poisons are regulated according to their impact on public health. But the EPA has only restricted seven of 225 dangerous chemicals since Congress ordered them to take action in the early 1970s.

Mark Abramowitz, program director for the Santa Monica-based Coalition for Clean Air, said Bush’s plan is “weak” but nevertheless far superior to the current program.

“It could result in a much more aggressive federal program to control air toxics,” he said. “The current program is not working at all. I am hoping the proposed weak requirements on air toxics will be strengthened, but any enhancement is better than the experience we have had in the past.”

Bush’s plan is expected to reduce releases of such chemicals substantially. It calls for creating regulations based on the best available emissions-cutting technology. Under the plan, the EPA would develop regulations for 10 kinds of industries within two years, 25% of all polluting industry within four years, 50% within seven years and the rest, if necessary, within 10 years.

Once these regulations went into effect, the EPA would then decide whether the state-of-art technology was working to protect public health. The agency administrator could decide to set additional standards if the public still was being exposed to an “unreasonable risk.” But the administrator would have to take into account the cost to industry of any new regulations before issuing them.

‘Same Wave Length’

“‘Most industry is in favor of a technology approach, so at least in general principle, we are on the same wave length,” said Ronald Hamm, a spokesman for an industry coalition that lobbied the Bush Administration on the plan.

“We like the fact that the EPA administrator would have rule-making discretion, if there is a substance not deemed worthy of control because it is technologically not feasible or because the health considerations are not significant,” said Pugh of the Washington-based manufacturers’ association. The regulatory process, she said, will give industry, along with environmental groups, the opportunity to participate.

But William Becker, executive director of two national organizations that represent state and local air pollution control officials, said Bush’s plan could leave many pollutants uncontrolled until the year 2015. Devising, implementing, reviewing and then tightening the regulations may take that much time, he said.

Becker also objected to the provision that gives the EPA discretion in deciding whether less-dangerous polluters should be regulated.

“It allows the EPA not to regulate all sources that emit air toxics,” he said. “Instead, it imposes a schedule for regulating 50% of all the facilities and then provides EPA with discretion in decisions not to regulate the rest . . . If the agency decided the bottom 50% of (industrial) source categories were not necessary, the agency could decide not to regulate.”

Moreover, Becker said, there is no standard for determining what is an “intolerable risk.”

“It is important for the public and industry to know the benchmark against which they are being measured,” he said. “There is just no benchmark, no criterion, to judge what is unacceptable.”

An “intolerable risk,” for instance, could be defined as enough pollution to cause more than one person in a million to get cancer after living near a plant for 70 years, he said.

Robert Hattoy, Southern California director of the Sierra Club, agreed.

Environmental groups, Hattoy said, want regulations that will reduce hazardous emissions by 90%. Environmentalists had also hoped Bush’s plan would create a chemical safety board to investigate industrial accidents in which toxins were released into the environment.

By requiring the EPA to consider the cost before tightening regulations to prevent an intolerable risk, Hattoy said the plan was “a capitulation to industry’s demands.”