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HEI President Elena Craft comments on air quality standards for soot
The following is excerpted from an article in Politico’s E&E News quoting HEI President Elena Craft. Please note you can read the full article here with a subscription.
E&E News
How far will the agency go to toughen what's been described as one of the most significant public health rules?
BY: SEAN REILLY
12/19/2023 01:35 PM EST
GREENWIRE | EPA is closing out 2023 on the verge of a complicated decision about how much to tighten air quality standards for soot — tiny flecks of air pollution that can cost lives, but also requires expensive and thorny cleanup plans.
"This will be one of the most significant rules that EPA puts forward, I think, in this administration, for sure," Elena Craft, president of the Health Effects Institute, a nonprofit research group located in Boston, said in an interview.
The rule, now in the final stages of an appraisal by the White House's regulations shop, is expected to further ratchet down the yearly ambient air limit on what are formally known as fine particles. …
…If the exact mechanisms by which soot does so much harm are still not fully understood, Craft said that there's evidence that they cause inflammation and direct DNA damage. "So there's a lot of different ways in which these particles may interfere."
