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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.
The assessment also suggested removing lead from regulation altogether, an option that had been considered and dismissed as "scientifically indefensible."
It took the EPA nearly nine months to reply. When it did, the agency said that while the policy assessment was not as informative as it could have been, it was moving forward with the changes.
So the agency's next move took the panel by surprise.
After more than two years of heated exchanges with the panel, and ruling against it in two prior air-pollution decisions, Johnson followed the scientists' advice.
He drastically cut the amount of lead allowed in the air to 1/10 the existing level - from 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 0.15.
Henderson, whose tenure on the board ended this fall, praised Johnson's ruling, calling it a tough new standard.
Yet in the days after his ruling, Johnson's legacy was tarnished again after it was revealed that, under pressure from the White House, there would be certain exemptions to the new lead rule:
Two hundred of the 350 plants - those that emit between a half-ton and one ton of lead a year - would go unmonitored.
Johnson is fond of saying that he set the toughest air-quality standards to date.
Henderson and other members concede that they are tougher, but not as strong as the science demands.
After 40 years studying the damage caused by air pollution, Henderson knows as well as anyone that science is fraught with uncertainty, and that answers are not always clear-cut. But when human health is at stake, she feels, there is one certainty: Science has an obligation to protect the public as best it knows how. The law requires it.
"When I came on, I thought we could establish the best possible standards to protect public health," she said. "In the end, I found that he was totally loyal to his boss. That was disappointing to me."
Contact staff writer John Sullivan at 215-854-2473 or johnsullivan@phillynews.com.
