The ink has barely dried on the long awaited mercury and air toxics standards, and already there are some in Congress furiously working to unravel this and other vital healthy air protections. A recent survey conducted by the American Lung Association revealed that 60% of Michigan and Ohio voters want EPA scientists, not members of Congress, to set pollution standards.
These very scientists have been sounding the alarm about coal-fired power plants for decades. Their research has confirmed air pollution from coal-fired power plants triggers asthma attacks, causes strokes and heart attacks, poisons our lakes with mercury, impairs children's lung development, causes cancer and cuts innocent lives short.
While we are grateful that five of Michigan's 19 coal-fired power plants have rightly prioritized public health by installing emission control technologies, those most vulnerable -- children, seniors and people living with diabetes, lung or cardiovascular disease -- cannot continue to wait for relief.
The mercury and air toxics standards are poised to slash power plant mercury emissions by 90% while also cutting acid gases and other harmful air toxics such as arsenic, benzene and formaldehyde from entering the air we breathe. These standards promise to save 11,000 lives every year. This is a promise we cannot afford to have broken.
It seems polluters are willing to do whatever it takes to avoid or delay cleaning up their toxic emissions, including wielding the kind of scare tactics that make hardworking Americans struggling to get by in this tough economy believe they must shoulder the false choice between affordable electricity and their family's health.
If it weren't enough to kick us while we are down, these same corporate polluters claimed a recent victory by engineering a legal ploy to delay the implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. Air toxics from power plants as far away as New York and Oklahoma dirty the air we breathe here in Michigan. This good-neighbor rule would protect us from these outside pollution sources while ensuring power plants do not cause harm to other downwind communities.
Every day this healthy air rule remains on hold, we suffer the consequences. It is estimated that as many as 1,400 Michigan deaths are tragically caused by power plant pollution that originates outside our state's invisible borders. By reducing pollution-caused deaths and illnesses, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule would return $4.6 billion to $11 billion in health benefits to our state's fragile economy.
As eager as some in Congress are to protect the right of power plant operators to sully the air we breathe, our own U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, seems just as keen on undermining regulations of air pollution by companies that use industrial boilers under the cloak of the payroll tax bill. Upton is leading the charge to blockade the cleanup of hazardous, mercury-laden emissions generated by the nation's largest and dirtiest industrial boilers, which are responsible for as many as 8,100 deaths and 52,000 asthma attacks every year.
At every turn, our right to breathe clean air is under attack. Now that some in Congress are more eager to shelter corporate polluters than they are to protect public health, never has our fight for healthy air been subject to such deliberate political engineering.
If we want to see our state's air quality improve for the sake our nearly 3 million children, every Michigan voter must tell Washington to cease efforts to block, weaken or delay our rightful Clean Air Act protections.
Jim Harrington is an advocacy specialist at the American Lung Association.
Read more here: http://www.freep.com/article/20120126/OPINION05/201260431/Guest-commentary-Cleaner-air-standards-under-attack-in-Congress?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7COpinion%7Cp
