Posted on 12/30/2009 12:42:20 PM PST by a fool in paradise
...The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will impose a stricter nationwide limit on ozone, or smog, next month, requiring further pollution cuts from vehicles and industries just as Houston complies for the first time with the current standard, set in 1997.
Thanks to cleanup efforts, favorable weather conditions and a slumping economy that reduced emissions-producing business and transportation, Houston will achieve the standard of 84 parts per billion, or 84 molecules of ozone for every billion molecules of air, by the thinnest of margins this year.
But the new limit, lowered on the basis of more recent medical evidence, will be no higher than 70 ppb.
The tougher stance will likely have a profound effect on Texas, which could find more than 25 counties out of compliance and in jeopardy of losing federal highway funds...
Environmentalists and scientists... contend that the stricter limits would be achievable for Houston through cleaner technologies for industrial facilities and expansion of the mass transit system...
Part of the challenge is that much of the Houston region's problem is beyond local control. As much as 60 ppb of ozone blow into the eight-county region from elsewhere on some days, and much of the rest comes from tailpipes, which fall under federal control.
The new smog standard will come four months after the EPA withdrew one that had been set in the final year of the Bush administration.
Then-EPA chief Stephen Johnson tightened the limit to 75 ppb, but the decision fell short of the recommendation of his science advisers, who called for it to be as low as 60 ppb and no higher than 70 ppb to protect public health...
A stricter limit could mean drastic new restrictions that affect personal choices, such as banning drive-through windows during smog season...
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
The Attack on the oil industry continues.
PS The EPA legislates the speed limit in the city of Houston and is why our highways do not permit 65MPH in the city anymore.
Unelected legislators. Wonderful.
And our pollution standards will not be met by attacking the car.
But there is an added push for more fail rail.
No problem for the EPA.....they’ll just turn it over to INTERPOL.
Houston, you have a problem.................
Just add this to the long list of why Texas should be considering telling the Feds to take a hike.
I seem to remember a report that there are several deciduous trees that are native to the south east Texas area that emit ozone during the summer.
So should we cut these trees down to help the environment?
The EPA is near the top of my wish list of federal agencies to be eliminated.
There they go again, moving the goal posts just as the line is approached.
Zero tolerance. Who ever thought they would just keep hunting up more and more sensitive recording instruments?
What is ozone, anyway? It is a tri-atomic form of oxygen, and even more reactive in the presence of substances which are prone to oxidation. Thus it disappears rather quickly down here close to the surface. O3 is in fact slightly HEAVIER than CO2, and is readily absorbed by surface water or raindrops, where it enacts its mischief below the water’s surface.
Electrically powered surface rail transport systems generate a considerable amount of ozone from the sparks that jump between the separation of one transfer surface to another, as seen within a brush-type electric motor or generator unit. Most of this, however, is wafted away before it is adequately measured, while that generated by operation of internal combustion engines tends to collect below the freeway overpasses.
Ozone is mother nature’s way of cleaning up after terpenes and the like emanating from the trees that God made. If sufficient ozone isn’t there, Old Sol will see to it that some is made.
A good way to start a revolution.
The EPA, a gift from that traitor RINO “Tricky Dick” Nixon. The only people who praise that scum Nixon are neo-con, democrat agent provocateurs, red-diaper baby bolsheviks.
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