New Approaches on Energy and the Environment

CHAPTER

12

Focus on Particulates More Than Smog

by Alan J. Krupnick

With the costs of meeting air quality standards among the highest of all federal regulations, I recommend that your administration take specificactions to focus more of the nation’s efforts on meeting the standard on fine particulates, which is the pollutant that has the most severe effect on public health. Correspondingly, you should reduce, through changes in regulation, the current emphasis on meeting the standard for ozone, which is less potent a pollutant, is too subject to the vagaries of weather, and will be reduced as an ancillary benefit to fine-particulate reductions and as vehicles get cleaner.

The Problem

Throughout the 1990s, with the exception of ozone, most areas ...