NRCM Supports This Action Which Will Save Thousands of Lives Annually
NRCM Press Release
Augusta, ME—The Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) joins with a broad range of organizations in support of the just-finalized Soot Pollution Standard to be announced today by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This updated clean air safeguard will protect Americans against the deadly health impacts of soot (“particulate”) pollution.
NRCM’s Executive Director Lisa Pohlmann issued the following statement:
“Today, the Obama Administration and the EPA are putting peoples’s health ahead of the polluters’s agenda by finalizing a new clean air standard that will protect Mainers and all Americans from dangerous soot pollution from power plants, cars and trucks, and factories. Today’s action will ensure clean air and save thousands of lives annually.
Soot is one of the deadliest forms of air pollution, causing a wide variety of serious diseases including heart attacks, strokes, asthma attacks and acute bronchitis. We must continue to reduce pollution from here and from away, if we are to make a dent in Maine’s very high rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases. Clean air is important to everyone who breathes.
The broad benefits of the Soot Pollution Standard have created widespread support for this rule that will limit soot from dirty power plants, diesel trucks and other significant sources of soot pollution. A recent national survey by the American Lung Association finds that by a more than 2-1 margin Americans support stricter limits on the amount of soot released from industrial facilities.
Soot pollution also damages the environment by increasing the acidification of lakes and streams, and damaging soils, crops and forests. Soot is a leading cause of polluting haze, which obscures Maine’s views, affecting Maine tourists and residents alike.
Soot kills. The health of more than a third of all Americans â particularly children and the elderly — is at risk from soot pollution. We applaud the EPA for protecting Americans’s health and ignoring polluters’s well funded scare tactics and attacks on clean air and health protection.
Big polluters spent millions on television ads during the 2012 election cycle to convince voters to oppose clean air and clean energy policies. Voters didn’t buy it, rejecting the polluter agenda and instead affirming the Obama Administration’s clean air and clean energy priorities to protect public health.”
