(Image courtesy of NAM and EPA.)

Between the Volkswagen scandal and the air quality red alerts in Beijing, there’s been no shortage of air pollution news this year.

Now, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has filed an official challenge to the new ozone regulations laid down by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA recently modified its existing standard from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb.

NAM’s Reaction to the EPA’s New Standard

The association is claiming that this regulation could be one of the most expensive in history. NAM senior vice president and general counsel Linda Kelly described it as “unworkable and overly burdensome.”

She continued, “[O]ur air quality is improving and ozone levels are down more than 30 percent since 1980, yet the [Obama] administration insists on moving forward with tightening an already stringent standard.”

Watch the video below for a statement on the new EPA standard from NAM president and chief executive officer Jay Timmons:

Background Ozone

The association claims that the EPA’s new threshold is so low that even some national parks could find themselves out of compliance as a result of “background” ozone, over which they have no control. Recent studies cited by NAM have suggested that strong global winds (westerlies) are carrying air pollutants—including ozone—across the Pacific from China to the United States.

If the resulting background ozone ends up in the Grand Canyon or Yosemite, for example, then those parks could inadvertently exceed the EPA’s new threshold.

The Grand Canyon.

Although the EPA does have an exceptional events exclusion clause for dealing with background ozone, it currently only cites naturally occurring events such as wildfires.

Benefits and Costs of the New Ozone Standard

The EPA estimates public health savings resulting from the new standard at $2.9 to 5.9 billion annually in 2025. It also states that this would outweigh the costs of implementing the new standard, which it estimates at $1.4 billion.

It should be noted that, by law, the EPA cannot consider implementation costs when setting air quality standards. Hence, the $1.4 billion estimate is merely intended to be illustrative and publicly informative.

More importantly, EPA projections show that the vast majority of counties in the United States will meet the new standard by 2025 using federal and state programs that are either already in place or currently underway.

This makes the claims made by NAM somewhat suspect.

Does the new standard actually require overcoming some prohibitively expensive technological hurdle, or is NAM’s challenge a way of drawing a line in the sand against increasingly stringent EPA regulations?

Tell us what you think in the comments below.