Rolling Back PM2.5 Protections

The Trump administration has crossed a key threshold in its campaign to toss a stricter air pollution standard for soot, in a move that threatens to erase one of the Biden administration’s core public health accomplishments.

In a motion filed Monday evening, EPA attorneys asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate the standard, which is predicted to save thousands of lives by tightening the exposure limit to a pollutant tied to a higher risk of strokes, lung cancer and other cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

The case could provide a landmark test of the agency’s ability under President Donald Trump to successfully pull off an industry-friendly agenda of regulatory rollbacks.

In the newly filed motion, EPA echoed the arguments of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business advocates in faulting the Biden administration for allegedly taking a “regulatory shortcut” by adopting the stricter annual standard for the fine particles often dubbed soot without first conducting the “thorough review” required by the Clean Air Act.

“EPA now confesses error,” the attorneys wrote, adding that the agency also should have put greater weight on the “extraordinary” compliance costs associated with the new limit.

They urged a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit to rule before Feb. 7, when EPA is statutorily required to issue a first round of decisions on what parts of the country are flunking the stricter standard of 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

Whether the panel will take that route, however, is very much an open question. “I think they’re going to reject it flat out,” Pat Parenteau, professor emeritus at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said in an interview.

Parenteau noted that a 2001 Supreme Court ruling bars EPA from considering the potential compliance pricetag when setting what are formally known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards for soot and other common pollutants. The Trump administration’s current stance, he added, would also preclude regulators from revisiting those standards outside of a Clean Air Act review cycle even if a “health emergency” were to arise.

The judicial panel, made up of a Biden appointee as well as members named by former President Barack Obama and former President Ronald Reagan, seemed inclined to uphold the 9-micrograms rule during oral arguments held last December on legal challenges brought by Kentucky and almost two dozen other Republican-leaning states.

EPA’s bid to now scrap the stronger limit is likely to face resistance from California and other Democratic-led states also enmeshed in the litigation. At the Trump administration’s request, proceedings have been on hold since February to give EPA’s new leadership time to consider its position.

‘Regulatory reset’

Under the Clean Air Act, particulate matter is one of six pollutants subject to National Ambient Air Quality Standards that EPA is supposed to review every five years in light of the latest scientific research into their effects on human health and the environment.

Over the decades, the reviews — and successive tightening of most of those standards — have been a driver of air quality improvements credited with dramatic public health gains. They’ve also encountered intense opposition from industry advocates who say that the increasingly stricter limits hurt economic growth by making it more difficult to obtain permits for new projects.

Soot is technically known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5 because individual specks or droplets are no bigger than 2.5 microns in diameter or one-thirtieth the width of human hair. Direct and indirect sources include emissions from coal-fired power plants, tailpipe exhaust and wood stoves, meaning that any change to EPA regulations can ripple across wide swaths of the economy.

Because of their tiny size, those particles are able to find their way deep into the lungs and even reach the human bloodstream. Scientists have tied them a litany of heart and lung ailments as well as higher odds of developing Alzehimer’s disease and other neurological disorders.

In opting to cut the standard early last year from 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 9 micrograms, EPA predicted the change would prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths in 2032 when it is supposed to be fully in effect.

Because the agency also found that particulate exposure disproportionately harmed people of color, then-Administrator Michael Regan framed the stricter limit as an important step in furthering environmental justice.

In an unprecedented about-face, Regan’s decision also reversed the 2020 finding of EPA leaders during Trump’s first term that the earlier status quo was adequate.

In then revisiting that finding, Regan oversaw what was technically deemed a “reconsideration” of particulate standards instead of a full-fledged review. That truncated process has since fueled objections that the Biden administration failed to follow Clean Air Act requirements.

Even before Trump returned to office this past January, the National Association of Manufacturers and other business lobbies asked his incoming administration to reexamine the particulate rule as part of a broader “regulatory reset.”

In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin included the standard on a lengthy list of Biden-era regulations targeted for rollbacks. In a court filing this summer, air chief Aaron Szabo signaled the administration’s goal of vacating the standard by this coming February in favor of a replacement rule already in development.

As of publication time Tuesday, a spokesperson for the manufacturers association had not replied to an emailed request for comment earlier in the morning.

John Walke, clean air director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called EPA’s latest move unprecedented on several levels. Among them, Walke said in a text message: Never before has the agency asked a court “to do its dirty work” by killing a standard “without even reaching the merits of the lawsuit.”

https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-to-scrap-lifesaving-soot-pollution-limit/