"EPA May Drop Lead Air Pollution Limits"

[GreenPartyVoter]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The agency says revoking those standards might be justified "given the significantly changed circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant.

The EPA says concentrations of lead in the air have dropped more than 90 percent in the past 2 1/2 decades.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20061207/D8LRNL500.html

And in related news...

"Last Minute Move Would Delay EPA Rule"

WASHINGTON (AP) - Farmers would be off the hook for costly air pollution cleanups under an obscure provision slipped into a tax bill that may be the last act of this Congress.

Buried in the fine print of the bill filed Wednesday, the measure by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would forbid the Environmental Protection Agency from applying the Clean Air Act to dust and soot from farms until 2012.

Environmentalists complain the moratorium would grant farmers a five-year holiday from the EPA's health standards for fine particles and soot, which protect people living downwind.

An EPA rule last year set new standards for regulating soot, dust and other coarse air pollution particles aimed at industrial and urban sources, but it did not exempt farmers.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20061207/D8LRMLV80.html

[Tesha]

1. Kicking it up again...

[madrchsod]

2. this is so stupid it really is funny.....

this guy who brought this dust problem is a complete moran...

[mod mom]

3. Just wait till Sen Boxer becomes chair in January!