{"id":19123,"date":"2023-10-17T02:34:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T07:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=19123"},"modified":"2023-10-17T02:39:39","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T07:39:39","slug":"revealed-how-a-little-known-pollution-rule-keeps-the-air-dirty-for-millions-of-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=19123","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: how a little-known pollution rule keeps the air dirty for millions of Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A legal loophole has allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency<\/a> to strike pollution from clean air tallies in more than 70 counties, enabling local regulators to claim the air was cleaner than it really was for more than 21 million Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regulators have exploited a little-known provision in the Clean Air Act called the \u201cexceptional events rule\u201d to forgive pollution caused by \u201cnatural\u201d or \u201cuncontrollable\u201d events \u2013 including wildfires \u2013 on records used by the EPA for regulatory decisions, a new investigation from the California<\/a> Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian reveals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to obscuring the true health risks of pollution and swerving away from tighter control on local polluters, the rule threatens the potency of the Clean Air Act, experts argue, at a time when the climate crisis is posing an unprecedented challenge to the health of millions of Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where the EPA \u2013 the US agency monitoring air quality \u2013 has agreed to exclude bad air days from analysis, <\/strong>\u201cwe may have a sort of stable, relatively rosy picture when it comes to our regulatory world in terms of air-quality trends,\u201d said Vijay Limaye, a climate and health epidemiologist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non-profit advocacy group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is more complicated, and the air dirtier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe true conditions on the ground in terms of the air that people are breathing in, day after day, week after week, year after year, is increasingly an unhealthy situation,\u201d Limaye said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the summer of 2023, more than 20 states so far, from Wyoming to Wisconsin to North Carolina<\/a>, have flagged air-quality readings that were far higher than normal. Most of these days came in June, as skies in the midwest and eastern US were blanketed with Canadian wildfire smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In more than half of the states where exceptional events were forgiven, industry lobbyists and business interests pressed to make that happen, sometimes as the only public voice in the regulatory process. Also, to protect the status quo, some regulators spent millions of taxpayer dollars doing research for and making exceptional events requests, sometimes working hand in hand with industry stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meeting air-quality standards matters a lot to industry and politicians. Violations can add up to stricter, more costly and potentially unpopular pollution controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics say the growing use of the exceptional events rule for wildfires is of deep concern. \u201cYou need to level with the public about the number of days when the air quality was unhealthy,\u201d said Eric Schaeffer, a former regulator who directs the Environmental Integrity Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have saved more lives in this country because we cleaned up the air than almost any other environmental policy,\u201d said Michael Wara, the director of the climate and energy policy program at Stanford\u2019s Woods Institute for the Environment. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what\u2019s being undermined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe world has changed,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are living in a different world when it comes to wildfire and all of its consequences, including air pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to written questions, the EPA said it takes all air pollution seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWildland fire and smoke pose increasing challenges and human health impacts in communities all around the country,\u201d Khanya Brann, an EPA spokesperson, wrote. \u201cEPA works closely with other federal agencies, state and local health departments, tribal nations, and other partners to provide information, tools, and resources to support communities in preparing for, responding to, and reducing health impacts from wildland fire and smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EPA also pointed to \u201cmitigation plans\u201d, in which air districts that have experienced repeated exceptional events must create plans for educating and notifying the public about the pollution risk, as well as \u201csteps to identify, study, and implement mitigating measures\u201d like limiting the use of wood-burning stoves and wetting down unpaved roads before dust storms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More \u2018toxic soup\u2019 and more paperwork<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the US, clean-air policy long allowed local governments to write off some wildfire smoke on a case-by-case-basis as \u201cunrealistic to control\u201d or \u201cimpractical to fully control\u201d. But in 2005, the Republican senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who has long denied the climate crisis, won a years-long battle to amend the Clean Air Act. The new rule gave local officials more opportunity to exclude pollution from regulatory consideration for an array of events, from fireworks displays and volcanic eruptions to wildfires and even unusual traffic events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, the rule was used most successfully in a handful of south-western communities where high winds created a recurring problem of dust pollution. Over time, local regulators have turned to exceptional events for wildfires more and more often to reach air-quality goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our analysis of local and EPA records found that in 2016, air agencies flagged 19 wildfire events as potential exceptional events. In 2018 and 2021, 52 and 50 wildfire events were flagged. In 2020, 65 were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe uptick in exceptional events is absolutely consistent with what we see in the air pollution data,\u201d said Marshall Burke, an associate professor of global environmental policy<\/a> at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Smoke is accounting for a higher proportion of overall air pollution, and it\u2019s going up quickly, Burke said \u2013 not just in the western US, but nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No state is blamed more for smoke pollution than California, followed by Oregon and Canadian provinces, according to our analysis. Western states are more likely to point fingers at each other, while states in the midwest and north-east place the blame on Canadian provinces such as Alberta and Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wildfire smoke is a dirty and complicated polluter. Limaye, of the NRDC, called it a \u201ctoxic soup of air pollution\u201d. It carries soot and ash, regulated as particulate pollution, as well as hydrocarbons and other gases that, cooked in sunlight, help form ground-level ozone. It\u2019s a growing concern for public health, both near the source and thousands of miles away. Smoke, especially from a long-burning fire, can travel long distances and linger at dangerous levels for weeks at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We analyzed data recorded at air monitors nationwide. For every US county, on a day where the EPA excluded any data, we counted that day. Our analysis found that the total number of wildfire-related bad air days erased from regulatory consideration in counties nationwide was nearly double that of bad air days related to high winds: 236 compared with 121.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When wildfire caused air pollution, the rule was applied to more monitor readings over multiple days, not just to exclude particulate pollution but also smog or ozone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a lot of time,\u201d said <\/strong>John Walke, a lawyer for the NRDC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One or two violations at a single air monitor can flip an area from meeting air standards to missing the mark, according to Walke. Three or four violations over several years can prompt increasingly strict local pollution controls. \u201cSo a lot is riding on one, or two, or three violations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A smokier future<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The recent experience of California\u2019s Nevada county may offer a glimpse of a smokier future. So far, the exceptional events rule has removed 16 days from the record there in the last five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ozone levels are rising in the background in this foothill community, according to Julie Hunter, the interim chief for the northern Sierra air quality management district. She said more trucks and warmer temperatures are to blame. More frequently now, she said, wildfire smoke is like a \u201cpancake\u201d, settling flat across the rural valley, stuck until conditions change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During one fire in 2021, a thick plume of smoke covered the sun in the town of Grass Valley. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t see past down the driveway,\u201d said Dr Alinea Stevens, the medical director at the Chapa-De Indian health clinic in town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stevens remembered doctors and nurses moving among patients under the menacing amber skies, N95 masks snug on their faces to protect against Covid-19 \u2013 and wildfire smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over hours, the clinic\u2019s security guards got lightheaded and developed headaches. \u201cWe told them, you need to wear N95 masks, too,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cThat kind of prolonged exposure to those things was very real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After fires in 2018 and 2020, the EPA wiped more than two weeks of ozone pollution in the district from the record. That didn\u2019t get Nevada county all the way to a clean bill of health, but local regulators avoided having to tighten rules on local emissions. Hunter, the local regulator, said her district was likely to seek more exceptional events there, including for fires in the last two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we take out wildfire smoke as one of the things that we look at, then we\u2019re not going to be addressing problems that really affect our community here,\u201d said Stevens, who directs the health clinic. <\/strong>The surge of asthma and other health problems from smoke can be overlooked when it happens in a rural community, she said: \u201cI think it\u2019s maybe a way that we don\u2019t put enough attention into fixing something that can be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Officials at the California air resources board (Carb) stress that state law works toward mitigating the effects of climate change, and state policies are supposed to minimize the risk of catastrophic fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really are trying to pull out all the stops,\u201d Michael Benjamin, the chief of Carb\u2019s air-quality planning and science division, said. Practically, he added: \u201cWe and the air districts in California will continue to take advantage of the exceptional events provisions in the Clean Air Act to try to show attainment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to showing attainment, the stakes are high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrubbing smoke from regulatory accounting allows local governments and business to continue as usual, since the practice obscures the toll wildfires take on public health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also ignores the ways that the climate crisis is altering how people decide where to live across the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We are all inheriting this\u2019<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, Maitreyi Siruguri and her husband woke in the night to a sky lit unnaturally orange. They left their Santa Rosa, California, home with their young children in the early hours of the morning; the fire that eventually swirled through went on to kill 22 people and destroy more than 5,600 structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward, \u201cI was starting to sense the emotional drain, from everyone having to go through this,\u201d she said. She searched the internet with worry about how smoke could harm her children, then three and seven years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, they left for the suburbs of Chicago. They could afford to buy a house; the family would be closer to friends and relatives \u2013 and further, she hoped, from wildfire and smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in India in the 1980s and 1990s, and working as a climate educator, Siruguri knows very well that there is no escape hatch leading away from environmental problems. \u201cWe are all inheriting this, in every part of the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wara, of Stanford\u2019s Woods Institute, argues that such an inheritance requires investment. Rather than trying to protect the status quo, he said, governments could make a new cost-benefit analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt would not be unreasonable\u201d to boost spending significantly to manage public and private lands to minimize smoke, \u201csomething like what we think is reasonable when it comes to coal-fired power plants, which is billions of dollars per year\u201d, he said. \u201cBecause the harms that are being created by the smoke are large.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This summer, as air quality worsened across Illinois<\/a> from Canadian fires, Siruguri worried anew in Naperville. On a late July day, when smoke pollution had returned, she brought her child to soccer camp, and asked the camp\u2019s director whether the air was healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t have an answer. \u201cHe was like, well, we kind of wait till somebody tells us what to do or you make the decision for your child,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siruguri believes the government must work to stop climate change, including by switching energy sources away from fossil fuels. She believes that when officials talk to the public, they should be honest about how smoke is changing air over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard for the general public to know. The next time I see bad air quality, I will be looking for how that\u2019s getting recorded,\u201d Siruguri said. \u201cIt is concerning that these decisions are made behind the scenes, almost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walke of the NRDC agreed: \u201cThe worst possible outcome is lying to the American people about whether the air they breathe is safe or unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act\u2019s Dirty Secret is a collaboration of the California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian. Molly Peterson is a reporter for the California Newsroom. Dillon Bergin is a data reporter for MuckRock. Emily Zentner is a data reporter for the California Newsroom. Andrew Witherspoon is a data reporter for the Guardian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theguardian<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A legal loophole has allowed the US Environmental Protection Agency to strike pollution from clean air tallies in more than 70 counties, enabling local regulators to claim the air was cleaner than it really was for more than 21 million Americans. Regulators have exploited a little-known provision in the Clean Air Act called the \u201cexceptional events rule\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784,5780],"tags":[1337,2523,1256,1612,22480,4102,23397,7981,2605,21056],"class_list":["post-19123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-livehood","tag-air","tag-epa","tag-health","tag-law","tag-loopholes","tag-pollution","tag-populace","tag-quality","tag-regulators","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19125,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19123\/revisions\/19125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}