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Politics choke clean-air efforts
Scientists say the EPA chief bowed to pressure from the White House, hampering pollution-control efforts.
"There were people at the White House who openly said they didn't believe smog causes health problems," he said. "How do you discuss policy with people like that?"
Panel members thought Johnson failed on both ozone rules.
In a letter to Johnson sent April 7, the panel wrote that it did "not endorse the new primary ozone standard as being sufficiently protective of public health," especially the most vulnerable, and that it failed "to satisfy the explicit stipulations of the Clean Air Act."
"It's outrageous," said John Balmes, a physician who studies ozone and served on the panel.
"When you have a committee of 23 people from a variety of disciplines unanimously agreeing on the science," Balmes said, "and he says separately that there is too much uncertainty to follow the recommendations of the panel, a kind phrase would be 'B.S.' This is not a committee of wild-eyed radicals."
Heavy metal
About the same time Henderson and the panel were considering ozone, they were also reviewing airborne lead.
It was one pollutant everyone could agree was bad.
Since the 1970s, evidence had been piling up that airborne lead spewed from smelting plants, leaded gasoline and other sources impaired cognitive functioning in children.
The EPA had not changed the standard since 1978.
The agency's rationale was that it had already eliminated much of the danger of airborne lead when, in 1996, it banned leaded gasoline after a 25-year phase-out program.
But some dangers remained.
It was a fact well known to the Missouri town of Herculaneum, where a smelting plant had been in operation for more than 100 years. One study in 2001 showed that within a half-mile of the facility, 53 percent of children under 6 had high lead levels in their blood.
On some of the town's streets, the lead dust along roadways was so prevalent that officials warned pregnant women and children under 6 to stay away.
The plant, run by the Doe Run company, had violated emissions laws, and in 2002 part of the town was shuttered because it was too contaminated.
The company said it has worked hard to reduce lead emissions by investing in new cleaner technologies. "It's our community, too," said Kent Martin, a spokesman for Doe Run. "That's why these standards needed to be upgraded."
In 2004, an environmental coalition sued EPA to compel a review of the standard.
To make their recommendation about where the new standards should be set, the panel would rely on the EPA "staff paper," a review of the more than 6,000 studies that had been conducted on lead and its effects over the last few decades.
The staff paper is an essential part of any ambient air quality review, but Henderson and the panel noticed that the paper was not among the key documents the EPA provided.
Henderson asked for the paper, but was told that the agency had decided to change how air-pollution reviews would be conducted.
