Environmental ozone standards

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must base Clean Air Act regulations on science, not costs, and has remanded the agency s ozone standard, finding its interpretation of that part of the statute faulty and unreasonable. Responses from tyre industry spokespersons are discussed, with particular reference to compliance costs. 

Environmental groups are condemning and business interests are applauding President Obama s decision last week to delay action on revising the ozone standard. 

The oxidation of trace amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by catalytic processes was used as early as the 1940s. At that time, the main use of the procedure was to recover energy or remove unpleasant odors from waste gas streams. The US Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970 led to a greater interest in the recovery and removal of VOC as oil prices increased and environmental standards became more stringent. As a result of the Clean Air Act, from 1990 an amendment required that a hst of areas which did not comply with the National Ambient Air Quality Ozone Standard of 0.12 ppm over a one hour period was introduced. 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Transfer Standards for Calibration of Air Monitoring Analyzers for Ozone," EPA-600/4-79-056. Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, Research Triangle Park, NC, 1979. 

FIGURE 7.3 In 1984, 14 years after the passage of the Clean Air Act, significant areas of the United States were still in violation of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone. Courtesy, Environmental Protection Agency. 

New Stricter Environmental Standards based on UN Protocols Kyoto (GHGs) Montreal (ozone-depleting chemicals CFCs, etc) (e.g., Canada s New Model Energy Code for Housing that reduces GHGs). 

On the basis of the foregoing discussion, it appears that, if traditional criteria for hazard evaluation are applied to the toxicologic data on experimental animals, there is little room for complacency r arding current ambient concentrations of ozone. Functional, biochemical, and structural effects in both pulmonary and extrapulmonary sterns have been reported by numerous investigators at or near concentrations that are at least occasionally achieved in some polluted urban centers. Unfortunately, there are no adequate methods for extrapolating data to obtain reliable quantitative estimates of population risk at environmental concentrations near the standard, and there is no assurance that the risk is zero. 

With the exception of calibration, the measurement problems that were apparent in 1970, at the time of publication of the fost air quality criteria document on photochemical oxidants, have essentially been solved for ozone. This remarkable achievement is the result of unstinting efforts by people working at epa s National Environmental Research Center, North Carolina the National Bureau of Standards private research contractors sponsored primarily by epa private instrument manufacturers the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology the Air and Industrial Hygiene Laboratory, California Department of Health the Air Pollution Research Center of the University of California at Riverside and the California Air Resources Board (carb). 

Air quality standards. The Environmental Protection Agency EPA has established health-based National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six pollutants carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and lead. The current NAAQS are presented in Table 7.9. (US EPA, 1993). 

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