Some time this week, the Environmental Protection Agency likely will present a spectacular example of an agency so devoted to its routine that it marches straight ahead into the production of real harm. The EPA is expected to formally adopt its latest proposal for cleaner gasoline and less motor vehicle exhaust pollution. Ozone is the principal ingredient of smog and the major threat to health from air pollution generally. In the past quarter-century, the nation has achieved major reductions at great cost.
Ozone is the product of extremely complicated chemistry.
It takes two pollutants to make it, oxides of nitrogen and unburned gasoline. Further cuts in emissions of these substances is what the EPA is planning. But in recent years, researchers have found that the air in many cities has just the right mixture of pollutants in it so that the reductions in nitrogen compounds that the EPA seeks would increase peak ozone in the urban core. The EPA's less sophisticated model, unable to zero in on urban cores, shows no such effects. The agency says it is aware of the issue, but declines to say if or how the regulation will be changed.