Posted on 04/05/2006 8:08:09 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The Environmental Protection Agency has joined a beef producers' group in criticizing a 10-year study by California health officials that found more people died in the Coachella Valley on dusty days than clear ones.
The federal government cited the research last year among evidence for possible new limits on dust, soot, and other pollution. But the EPA now proposes giving agriculture, mining, and natural sources of "coarse particulate pollution" an exemption from the rules.
The National Cattleman's Beef Association took credit on its Web site for protecting farmers and ranchers from having to enact expensive dust controls, stating, "Thanks to NCBA efforts, EPA has agreed to exclude dust from agriculture sources."
Environmentalists said the agency had been overly influenced by the beef producers.
"There is the appearance the cattlemen got a special deal politically, and breathers can suffer as a result," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.
Bill Wehrum, the EPA's top air quality official, said the beef producers did not get special treatment. He said their views were reflected in the EPA's 90-page proposal for new national health standards, but that the proposal reflects other views as well.
He said the EPA issued the proposal in the hopes of spurring debate before a final ruling is made. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson is to set the final standards by September.
A 2003 study led by Bart Ostro, chief of air pollution epidemiology at California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, found that days with elevated levels of coarse particles in the air could increase deaths from heart attacks and other cardiac problems by 10 percent. The study said reducing pollution by one-third could save up to 20 lives a year.
Coarse particles are airborne specks between 2.5 and 10 microns in diameter; 10 microns are about one-seventh the diameter of a human hair.
The study helped prompt the South Coast Air Quality Management District and community leaders to reduce dust by paving dirt roads, sweeping streets more often, and allowing less crop tilling in high winds.
Beef producers went to the EPA with concerns about several aspects of the study, citing work by Yale University epidemiologist Jonathan Borak, who consulting company analyzes research for industry clients. He concluded that the research was not reliable, specifically taking issue with Ostro's coarse-particle estimates.
Ostro said his study had previously passed muster in three peer reviews.
The study said reducing pollution by one-third could save up to 20 lives a year.
20? They want the entire state's ag base gutted for 20 people? How much would it cost to move them by comparison?
Of those 20, how many were on death's door? Anyone who would die because of marginal amounts of airborn dust must be on pretty close to the edge already.
This is a joke, right?
It's a racket, funded by tax-exempt, "charitable" donations to environmental groups from wealthy foundations whose owners are heavily investing in foreign food production and converting ag real estate into high-priced sustainable development.
Resource racketeering is highly organized crime on a global scale.
Man, that's the whopper of the night! It could well take me hours to regain my composure after that one. Yep, the EPA's just been roped by we crazy Cowboys, folks! The fix is in, I tell you! Just wait 'till we come back for the USDA...
We wish it was a joke, don't we?
I remember a few swine farms getting shut down a few years ago based on 'EPA' studies.
Yet, the EPA announced the air was safe when the towers went down here.
LOL! Any day now....
From your keyboard to God's ear!
I wonder when the FEDS are going to tell me I can't drive down the dirt road to my house. I wonder if they are going to outlaw children from making mud pies since they stir up the fine dust(it makes the best pies).
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