Posted on 05/07/2008 4:47:19 PM PDT by SmithL
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Bush administration has violated legal deadlines for updating the nation's clean-air standards on carbon monoxide, a federal judge in San Francisco has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White told the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to follow a schedule that would allow a full scientific review, public comment and any proposed changes in the standard to take place by May 2011. The EPA had proposed a timetable that would extend through October 2012.
Carbon monoxide, an odorless and invisible byproduct of incomplete combustion in auto exhaust, refinery fumes and other emissions of fossil fuels, is lethal at high levels and can cause health problems and birth defects at lower levels. It is one of the pollutants for which the EPA sets a nationwide standard, requiring states to devise their own plans for compliance.
The current national standard was set in 1971. Federal law requires a reassessment every five years, but the EPA last reviewed the standard in 1994 and made no changes, said Shana Lazerow, a lawyer for Communities for a Better Environment, one of the groups that sued the federal agency.
Environmental groups in the lawsuit said recent scientific studies have found that carbon monoxide is dangerous at levels that were previously considered safe. They said two reports in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, published in 2001 and 2005, both found low birth weights among children born to women who were exposed to carbon monoxide at levels far below those allowed by the 1971 standard.
"Current health standards allow our children to be exposed to dangerous levels of carbon monoxide across the country," said Jeremy Nichols, director of Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action, another plaintiff in the case.
Lazerow said studies also show that poor and minority children are most at risk.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
It just writes itself....
As a major producer of CO2, CO, and (mostly) Methane.... poor children are not allowed in my house. In fact, my grandchildren aren't allowed in my house until they have passed a firearm safety course.
/johnny
Why are poor and minority children more at risk? Does this bill mean that poor single parent mom’s and illegal aliens get free exhaust system repairs on their beater cars?
They really should deal with rusty hydrogen first! /tinfoil
Free mufflers for everyone!!!!!!
District Judge Jeffrey White told the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to follow a schedule that would allow a full scientific review..
LOL! Or what? Take a hike, schmo.
First, if 1994 was the LAST time they reviewed the standard, why NOW? (I know the answer, to help the Rat presidential candidate).
Second, maybe (most likely) if the 1994 review under a RAT administration produced no changes in the standard, there shouldn't be a change even now. Sometimes the best action is no action.
Isn’t there some kind of intelligence test that people need to pass before they’re allowed to be a judge? I guess not as evidenced by the continuous barrage of stupid decisions that these leftist morons continue to make.
Stay tuned for next week’s episode of “Ninth Jerk-it Court of Schlemiels”, which will rule on the deadly DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!
Federal law (CAA) requires that the standards be reviewed and if appropriate, changed every five years. The root of this problem is the law, not the agency (though they are a source of plenty of problems on their own). The law (the Clean Air Act) needs to be changed.
The process is completely broken, and changes to the CAA will not save a single life from a CO leak in a furnace or space heater...
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