Bush Leads the Nation

posted by The Vidiot @ 4:56 PM Permalink

EPA May Drop Lead Air Pollution Limits

The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The agency says revoking those standards might be justified "given the significantly changed circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant.

The EPA says concentrations of lead in the air have dropped more than 90 percent in the past 2 1/2 decades.
[...]
Lead is one of six air pollutants the EPA is required to review every five years to make sure the health limits are protective enough. The others are ozone, soot, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides.

The EPA has repeatedly missed the deadlines set under the Clean Air Act, incurring the legal wrath of environmental groups.
[...]
In July, a Washington-based trade group for all U.S. lead battery makers wrote a top EPA air quality official to urge that the agency remove lead from its list of air pollutants.

So the EPA says the program is working so we can end it? And I'm sure that lobbying (read: giving $$ to Bushco) by those groups had nothing to do with it. This could explain why I own the Brooklyn Bridge and a swamp in Florida.