Environmental Defense Wins Settlement To Curb Smog In Urban Areas

The federal government today approved an agreement to control harmful smog in a number of the nation’s most polluted urban areas by no later than 2002. The agreement settles a case brought by Environmental Defense and five other groups that requires clean air plans to protect public health by setting firm deadlines for progress in controlling pollution.

Today’s settlement allows communities to craft solutions first by giving states additional time to correct deficiencies and adopt sound smog control plans. If states fail to create adequate air pollution cleanup plans by deadlines set in the Clean Air Act, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) becomes responsible for creating its own smog control plans for these areas.

“This settlement is an important public health victory,” said Environmental Defense transportation director Michael Replogle. “Now, the states must step up to the plate with real plans to protect our families, our children and our nation’s elderly from the dangerous effects of air pollution. State and local governments should help to quickly replace dirty old technologies with new and cleaner ones for transportation, energy, industry, and consumer products, and work to slow sprawl and the growth of dependence on motor vehicles.”

EPA and medical experts have shown that smog air pollution damages lung tissue, reduces lung function, and makes the lungs susceptible to other irritants. Smog not only affects people with impaired respiratory systems, such as asthmatics, but harms healthy adults and children as well. It is estimated that during the summer of 1997 smog pollution was associated with over 50,000 respiratory-related hospital admissions, over 150,000 emergency room visits, and over 6 million asthma attacks in the Eastern United States.

The urban areas covered by the settlement to comply with EPA’s long-existing public health standard for smog are: metropolitan New York/Northern New Jersey/Long Island; the Greater Connecticut area (Hartford); metropolitan Philadelphia/Wilmington/Trenton; the metropolitan Baltimore and Washington, DC metropolitan areas; the Springfield, Massachusetts area; metropolitan Houston/Galveston/Brazoria, Texas; the metropolitan Chicago/Gary/Lake County area; and the Milwaukee/Racine metropolitan area. The settlement was filed with the federal district court for the District of Columbia.