AUSTIN – Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced proposed National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and coarse particulate matter (PM10) that leave the current standards unchanged.

This proposal marks the first time since the PM NAAQS were established that the standards will remain the same. It is a significant victory for all Americans, as it maintains our world leadership for reductions in PM pollution and science-based regulations while preventing billions of dollars in unnecessary regulatory costs.

“America continues to be a world leader in clean air, having reduced emissions of the six criteria pollutants in the Clean Air Act by an aggregate 74 percent since 1970, a trend that has continued during the current administration,” said Mike Nasi, director of TPPF’s Life:Powered initiative. “The EPA has studied the science and correctly determined that America’s world-leading PM standards protect public health. The agency should continue reforming its regulatory processes, especially a full implementation of the Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule, to ensure that its cost/benefit analyses and scientific reviews are not distorted by inflated health-benefit projections, which are too often used to justify imposing unnecessary regulatory costs on Americans that divert their hard-earned dollars away from other priorities, like health care.”

TPPF’s Center for the American Future filed an administrative petition with EPA in 2017 seeking to ensure that EPA’s required five-year review of the PM2.5 NAAQS should not result in a more stringent and onerous regulation, as had occurred in past five-year reviews mandated under the Clean Air Act.

“Representing several small businesses concerned with their survival if the standard were made more stringent, we marshalled the best scientific evidence available and presented it to EPA, together with legal arguments challenging any effort to gratuitously increase regulatory burdens on small business,” said Ted Hadzi-Antich, senior attorney with TPPF’s Center for the American Future. “Today’s decision by EPA is gratifying to our clients and to small businesses across the nation who continue to fight for survival under EPA’s air regulations.”

A copy of TPPF’s 2017 petition is available here:

https://www.texaspolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2017.11.09-NAAQS-Petition.pdf

A copy of The EPA’s Pretense of Science: Regulating Phantom Risks is available here:

https://www.texaspolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/White-Bennett-EPA’s-Pretense-of-Science1.pdf