Sixteen AGs Petitioned EPA to Reconsider Decision to Retain Inadequate Ozone Air Quality Standards

MARCH 1, 2021

New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 16 attorneys general in filing a petition for reconsideration of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to retain the existing National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone. Since the current primary and secondary standards for ozone were set at 70 parts per billion in 2015, significant new evidence has emerged regarding the human health harms of ozone exposure, prompting many experts in the medical and scientific communities to back more stringent federal standards. The AGs warned that the EPA’s decision to retain the existing standards “ignored important new evidence demonstrating a need for more stringent ozone standards to protect public health and welfare.” In their petition, the AGs detailed several reasons that compel the EPA to reconsider its decision, including a recent study of “the association between long-term exposure to ozone pollution and hospital admissions among Medicare participants,” which found that ozone “poses significant risks to the cardiovascular and respiratory health of elderly people within the United States.” The AGs also faulted the EPA for effectively dismissing the findings of several studies raised by AGs during the review process, based on a “cursory, ‘provisional consideration’.” The petition also cited a Government Accountability Office report that “potentially casts doubt on the sufficiency of state ozone data used by EPA in its exposure and risk analysis,” and “further calls into question EPA’s decision that the existing primary standard of 70 [parts per billion] protects public health with an adequate margin of safety.”