EPA works against smog, for trees

The Environmental Protection Agency moved today to enact stricter laws against smog-creating pollutants, reports The New York Times.

A snippet:

The agency is also proposing a secondary standard that will vary with the seasons to protect plants and trees from repeated exposure.

The agency estimated that complying with the new standard will cost $19 billion to $90 billion a year by 2020, to largely be borne by manufacturers, oil refiners and utilities. But the agency said that those costs would be offset by the benefits to human health, which it valued at $13 billion to $100 billion a year in the same period.

As covered in the blog, harmful particles in the air like nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic compounds have been linked to a range of human health problems, including headaches, respiratory illness and cancer.

This is one of the reasons the Friends of Trees–Metro–ODOT partnership to plant thousands of trees and shrubs along the I-205 Multi-Use Path is garnering so much positive attention.

What do we think of this from the E.P.A.?

–Toshio Suzuki