~
EPA Issues First National Standards for Mercury Pollution
from Power Plants~
~
Historic ‘mercury and air toxics standards’ meet 20-year
old requirement to cut dangerous smokestack emissions ~
~
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has issued the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the first national
standards to protect American families from power plant emissions of mercury and
toxic air pollution like arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide. The
standards will slash emissions of these dangerous pollutants by relying on
widely available, proven pollution controls that are already in use at more than
half of the nation’s coal-fired power plants.
~
EPA estimates that the new safeguards will prevent as many as
11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year. The standards will also
help America’s children grow up healthier – preventing 130,000 cases of
childhood asthma symptoms and about 6,300 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each
year.
~
"By cutting emissions that are linked to developmental
disorders and respiratory illnesses like asthma, these standards represent a
major victory for clean air and public health– and especially for the health of
our children. With these standards that were two decades in the making, EPA is
rounding out a year of incredible progress on clean air in America with another
action that will benefit the American people for years to come," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will protect millions of
families and children from harmful and costly air pollution and provide the
American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs of
compliance."
~
“Since toxic air pollution from power plants can make people
sick and cut lives short, the new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a huge
victory for public health,” said Albert A. Rizzo, MD, national volunteer chair
of the American Lung Association, and pulmonary and critical care physician in
Newark, Delaware. “The Lung Association expects all oil and coal-fired power
plants to act now to protect all Americans, especially our children, from the
health risks imposed by these dangerous air pollutants.”
~
More than 20 years ago, a bipartisan Congress passed the 1990
Clean Air Act Amendments and mandated that EPA require control of toxic air
pollutants including mercury. To meet this requirement, EPA worked extensively with stakeholders, including industry, to
minimize cost and maximize flexibilities in these final standards. There were
more than 900,000 public comments that helped inform the final standards being
announced today. Part of this feedback encouraged EPA to ensure the standards
focused on readily available and widely deployed pollution control technologies,
that are not only manufactured by companies in the United States, but also
support short-term and long-term jobs. EPA estimates that manufacturing,
engineering, installing and maintaining the pollution controls to meet these
standards will provide employment for thousands, potentially including 46,000
short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs.
~
Power plants are the largest remaining source of several
toxic air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, cyanide, and a range of other
dangerous pollutants, and are responsible for half of the mercury and over 75
percent of the acid gas emissions in the United States. Today, more than half of
all coal-fired power plants already deploy pollution control technologies that
will help them meet these achievable standards. Once final, these standards will
level the playing field by ensuring the remaining plants – about 40 percent of
all coal fired power plants - take similar steps to decrease dangerous
pollutants.
~
As part of the commitment to maximize flexibilities under the
law, the standards are accompanied by a Presidential Memorandum that directs EPA
to use tools provided in the Clean Air Act to implement the Mercury and Air
Toxics Standards in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability.
For example, under these standards, EPA is not only providing the standard three
years for compliance, but also encouraging permitting authorities to make a
fourth year broadly available for technology installations, and if still more
time is needed, providing a well-defined pathway to address any localized
reliability problems should they arise.
~
Mercury has been shown to harm the nervous systems of
children exposed in the womb, impairing thinking, learning and early
development, and other pollutants that will be reduced by these standards can
cause cancer, premature death, heart disease, and asthma.
~
The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which are being issued
in response to a court deadline, are in keeping with President Obama’s Executive
Order on regulatory reform. They are based on the latest data and provide
industry significant flexibility in implementation through a phased-in approach
and use of already existing technologies.~~
~
The standards also ensure that public health and economic
benefits far outweigh costs of implementation. EPA estimates that for every
dollar spent to reduce pollution from power plants, the American public will see
up to $9 in health benefits. The total health and economic benefits of this
standard are estimated to be as much as $90 billion annually.
~
The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and the final
Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which was issued earlier this year, are the most
significant steps to clean up pollution from power plant smokestacks since the
Acid Rain Program of the 1990s.
Combined, the two rules are estimated to prevent up to 46,000
premature deaths, 540,000 asthma attacks among children, 24,500 emergency room
visits and hospital admissions. The two programs are an investment in public
health that will provide a total of up to $380 billion in return to American
families in the form of longer, healthier lives and reduced health care
costs.
~
More information: http://www.epa.gov/mats/
~
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário