The risk in technology-based standards.(The Clean Air Act's Technology-Based Standards)

Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, September, 2005 by McCubbin, Patricia Ross

A. Legislative History: A Similar Shift from Health-Based to Technology-Based Standards

EPA failed miserably in its efforts to regulate hazardous air pollutants under the early health-based scheme of the Clean Air Act, which required the Agency not only to identify the pollutants that were likely to cause an increase in death or serious illness, but also to set emission limits for those pollutants at a level that would provide an "ample margin of safety" to protect public health. (108) In twenty years, the Agency only identified eight hazardous air pollutants and adopted "ample margin of safety" standards for a small fraction of the industries emitting those pollutants. (109) The delays were due in large part to EPA's difficulty in deciding, as a matter of...

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