House Tries to Restrict the EPA on Unecessary Regulations

The October 3 issue of Chemical & Engineering News has an article entitled, "House Takes Aim At Clean Air Act". Author Glenn Hess shows bias in his statement that "a House passed bill would delay EPA rules aimed at reducing toxic power plant emissions". The implication is that the House of Representatives intends to subject the public to toxic materials, which is far from the truth.

Hess shows a picture of a power plant throwing off clouds of what he implies are toxic materials. If one looks carefully at the picture, one will see that at their far extremities the clouds become invisible. This is because the original clouds were a mixture of very small drops of water and air. These substances are called aerosols and are visible. As the water droplets evaporate into the air and become a gas, the clouds disappear. This is not to say that some toxic gases might not also be present, but these would not be visible. A cloud which does not disappear, always contains finely divided solid particles, which may or may not be toxic.

The Supreme Court previously supported the EPA in only considering public health when developing emission standards. The House is objecting to that definition, because the EPA unilaterally decides what is toxic and in what concentrations. The extreme case involves the EPA's designation of CO2 as a toxic gas at the level of part per million in the atmosphere.. The obvious difficulty is that the EPA may force industry to spend many billions of $ to control "toxic" materials that do not need controlling.

The House bill restricting EPA's control of industry will likely not be passed by the Senate nor by the President, but the House is demonstrating a clear understanding of the relationship between science, regulations, and business change in the economy.