September 3, 2003

CLEAN AIR COUNCIL STATEMENT ON SMOG IN THE PHILADELPHIA REGION

Arthur Stamoulis:

Pennsylvania has one of the worst smog problems in the nation. In the Philadelphia region, there were more than fifteen days this summer when the smog was so bad that people were advised to limit their activities outdoors.

These were days when the smog made it dangerous for kids to run around outside. Dangerous for seniors with respiratory problems to walk to the mailbox. Dangerous for perfectly healthy adults to go out for a jog. Dangerous for construction workers and road crews to simply do their jobs.

Even at very low levels, smog can burn people's lungs and make their airways inflamed, red and swollen; this can cause chest pain and hacking coughs. In some cases, it can also cause permanent lung damage. Smog is bad for healthy adults-but it puts children, with their young, developing lungs, at particular risk. For people with chronic respiratory diseases like emphysema, smog pollution can even be fatal.

You'd think in the face of such a serious public health problem, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would be doing everything in its power to clean up our air. But rather than force polluters to obey the law and clean up their acts, EPA has sided with the corporate special interests that filthy our air.

Last week the Bush administration EPA announced the largest rollback of the Clean Air Act in history-and our children's health will suffer because of it.

For decades, old, dirty power plants have gotten away with polluting at extraordinarily high levels. By installing readily-available pollution controls, many of the nation's coal-fired power plants could reduce their emissions by up to 90%. That would go a long way towards improving air quality and reducing smog.

The Bush administration should be making sure these major polluters obey the law and install basic pollution controls. Instead, the President has allowed the corporate special interests to rewrite the rules so that they can keep on polluting forever.

Using EPA's own calculations, a national nonprofit called Clear the Air estimates that last week's rollbacks will shorten the lives of 20,000 Americans every year, trigger 400,000 unnecessary asthma attacks, and cause 12,000 cases of chronic bronchitis.

Philadelphia will be among the hardest hit by these health effects. Some of the biggest, dirtiest power plants in the nation are just upwind of Philadelphia in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana. The pollution from these plants gets carried downwind straight into our children's lungs.

Philadelphia's schoolchildren already suffer from higher than normal rates of asthma. Scientists cannot say with absolute certainty whether or not air pollution from power plants caused their asthma. What we do know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that air pollution makes asthma worse. Smog is triggering asthma attacks in Philadelphia's children. Thousands of Pennsylvanian children will suffer needless asthma attacks because of pollution in the air that could have easily been prevented.

When the Bush administration allows big corporations to rewrite the nation's environmental laws so they can pollute our air, it's our families' health that suffers. The White House is not taking Philadelphia's smog problem seriously. Clearly, it is long past time for Pennsylvania's Senators and Representatives to intervene to protect the health of their constituents.

Pennsylvanians can make a difference on this issue by calling Senators Specter and Santorum and urging them to support the Clean Power Act. The Clean Power Act is commonsense, bipartisan legislation that takes concrete steps to reduce air pollution and protect children's health. As the latest figures on smog pollution show, it is a law that is sorely needed.