Editorial: Your air quality may be more dangerous than your phone is telling you. The EPA is fine with that

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recent adoption of a more stringent annual limit on fine particulate matter, or soot, fulfills an overdue obligation to curb a pervasive and deadly type of air pollution that triggers asthma, heart attacks, strokes and a host of other health problems. The daily limit on lung-damaging pollution that the EPA refused to update determines whether the air violates health standards, and is therefore the most important metric on the AQI. An EPA spokesperson said agency Administrator Michael Regan decided against strengthening daily limits based on “uncertainty in the epidemiologic studies” about the health effects of short-term exposure to fine-particle pollution and because lowering the annual limit would provide “supplemental protection.” But in doing so, he ignored the advice of the agency’s own experts, members of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, a majority of whom recommended tightening the 24-hour limit on PM2.5 to between 25 to 30 micrograms per cubic meter, based on health studies showing that the current level “is not adequately protective” against illness and death. The Clean Air Act doesn’t allow the EPA to set air quality standards based on what they will cost, only on what is necessary to protect public health “with an adequate margin of safety.” That hasn’t prevented past administrations from shirking their obligations for economic or political reasons. The administration whiffed on this one too, squandering the opportunity to update the nation’s air quality alert system to better reflect scientific reality and communicate clearly to the public about the health risks of air pollution.