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Environment

Science advisers rebuke EPA on particulate rule

October 9, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 41

EPA science advisers have reprimanded the agency for ignoring their advice when establishing a standard for fine particulate matter in air. The seven members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee said EPA's late-September decision to retain a standard, set in 1997, for fine particulate matter leaves part of the U.S. population "at significant risk of adverse health effects." That standard of 15 µg/m3 of air, as averaged over a year, applies to particles that are 2.5 µm or less in diameter (C&EN, Oct. 2, page 38). The advisory panel had recommended that the agency lower this annual standard to between 13 and 14 µg/m3. The agency's actions, the panel said in a Sept. 29 letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, fails to provide an "adequate margin of safety" to protect public health, as required by the Clean Air Act. Since the panel's inception in the 1970s, EPA had always followed the advisers' recommendations on air quality standards, the letter said.

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