Clean Air Act

The Clean Air Act of 1970 is a U.S. federal law intended to reduce air pollution and protect air quality. The act—which underwent a major revision in 1990—deals with ambient air pollution (that which is present in the open air) as well as source-specific air pollution (that which can be traced to identifiable sources, such as factories and automobiles). The Clean Air Act sets standards for air quality that limit the amount of various pollutants to specified levels. The Clean Air Act also sets deadlines for governments and industries to meet the standards. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ultimately responsible for establishing standards and enforcing the Clean Air Act, although much of the daily business of fighting air pollution takes place at the state and local levels.

The Clean Air Act affects American businesses in a number of ways. Polluting industries may be forced to control air pollution through end-of-pipe methods, which capture pollution that has already been created and remove it from the air. Or businesses may be required to implement preventative measures, which limit the quantity of pollutants produced in the course of their operations. In either case, the cost of compliance with Clean Air Act regulations can be high. At the same time, however, the Clean Air Act has been largely successful in reducing air pollution. According to Business Week, it has contributed to a reduction in total emissions of major air pollutants in the United States of 30 percent between 1970 and 1995, despite the fact that U.S. population increased 28 percent during that same period.

Major Provisions of the Act

The original version of the Clean Air Act, which was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1970, was fairly straightforward. It placed the Environmental Protection Agency in charge of monitoring and improving the nation's air quality. The EPA's powers under the act included establishing research programs, setting clean air standards, enforcing regulations, and providing technical and financial assistance to state and local government efforts toward reducing air pollution. The 1970 act also directed the EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to control the emission of a number of substances that threatened air quality. The NAAQS divided pollutants into two categories: primary pollutants, or those directly affecting human health; and secondary pollutants, or those indirectly affecting human welfare.

The Clean Air Act underwent significant changes and amendments in 1990. The amendments brought widespread reform to the government's methods of dealing with all kinds of air pollution. For example, the 1990 revisions specifically targeted acid rain, with the goal of reducing the emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by half. The reforms also established new limits on ozone—a prime contributor to smog—in urban areas. Cities that failed to meet the regulations were divided into five different categories of non-attainment areas, with specific ozone emission goals for each category. Another change to the act addressed the depletion of the protective ozone layer in the earth's atmosphere. It mandated the gradual phasing out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting chemicals.

The Clean Air Act of 1990 also placed new regulations on automobile emissions. It set targets for reducing the emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides by vehicles and assembly plants. It also required new automobiles to meet stricter pollution standards, whether by installing pollution control equipment like catalytic converters or by burning cleaner fuels. Another major provision of the Clean Air Act dealt with toxic air pollutants. The 1990 amendments expanded the number of regulated substances from 7 to 189, set safety standards for factories where toxic chemicals were used or emitted, and required polluters to install the best available pollution control equipment.

Act Faces Court Challenges

In 1997, the EPA established strict new regulations to control the release of ozone and particulates, two dangerous pollutants that agency experts believed were responsible for killing thousands of Americans each year. In fact, Business Week reported that EPA estimates showed that the new rules could prevent 15,000 premature deaths, 350,000 cases of asthma, and one million cases of impaired lung function annually, in addition to saving billions of dollars in health care costs.

But business groups felt that the new regulations were too broad and would impose excessive compliance costs on industry. Associations representing a number of different industries joined in suing to over-turn the EPA rules. They argued that the agency had overstepped its authority in imposing the restrictions under the Clean Air Act, and had thus infringed on the constitutional power of Congress to pass laws. The industry groups also argued that the EPA should be forced to consider the costs as well as the benefits of such actions.

The lawsuit, Browner v. American Trucking Associations, went before the U.S. Supreme Court in the fall of 2000. In arguments before the court, the EPA claimed that it was banned by a 20-year-old federal court ruling from considering costs when imposing new regulations. In addition, the agency argued that industries consistently overestimated the costs of compliance. Both business groups and federal agency representatives believed that the case had broad implications for the future of government regulatory powers. The Supreme Court was expected to reach a decision in the summer of 2001.

Further Reading:

Bassett, Susan. "Clean Air Act Update." Pollution Engineering. July 2000.

Hess, Glenn. "Supreme Court Examines Arguments Concerning Clean Air Act Regulations." Chemical Market Reporter. November 13, 2000.

Marriott, Betty Bowers. Environmental Impact Assessment: A Practical Guide. McGraw-Hill, 1997.

"Regulators: By Whose Authority?" Business Week. October 16, 2000.

Varva, Bob. "The 1970 Clean Air Act Changes Rules on Fuels and the Environment." National Petroleum News. August 2000.

See also: Environmental Law and Business

Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, air pollution has been a major public health problem. In 1948, in Donora, Pennsylvania, an air pollution episode resulted in the deaths of nineteen people in a community of 14,000; 43 percent of the population were adversely effected. The cause was industrial emissions of combustion products combined with a thermal inversion. Today, air pollution still causes extensive rates of morbidity and mortality, and it poses a particular risk for children and those with chronic lung disease. Air pollution is a complex mixture of substances discharged into the air in a myriad of ways. Incinerators and combustion sources, including motor vehicles, emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, and sulfur dioxide; as well as more complex combustion by-products such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, furans, and benzo[a]pyrene. Feedstock materials (e.g., wastes that are included in incineration) that do not burn, such as cadmium, lead, chromium, mercury, and other metals also contribute to air pollution. Toxic-air contaminants may be emitted as products of incomplete combustion or in consequence of their manufacture, processing, use, or disposal.

In 1970, Senator Edmund Muskie led the effort to enact the Clean Air Act (CAA). It was a very ambitious statute in scope, technical detail, and in terms of precise timetables for compliance. Amendments in 1977 set new goals for attaining CAA standards, which had not been met in many parts of the United States. Amendments enacted in 1990 were directed to a number of areas that had not previously been addressed, including acid rain, ground-level ozone, stratospheric ozone depletion (by implementing the Montreal Protocol), and air toxics (control of toxic contaminants in air).

Priority Air Pollutants

The CAA act established six "priority air pollutants": ozone, sulfur dioxide, respirable particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), and lead. Priority air pollutants are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) strictly on a public health basis, with an adequate margin of safety to protect the population and special attention given to protection of vulnerable populations. Regulations for priority air pollutants are called National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Initially, the EPA was to adopt standards for the priority pollutants within ninety days of enactment of the CAA. The CAA also directed the states to develop state implementation plans (SIPs) that would assure that the NAAQS would be met within those states within nine months of issuance of NAAQS. Automobile manufacturers were given a five to six year deadline to achieve 90 percent reductions in emissions of CO, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The CAA led eventually to the phaseout of leaded gasoline in the United States, which in turn resulted in the lowering of blood-lead levels across the nation. The act also succeeded in attaining large reductions in sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide release levels in nearly every area of the country. An innovative pollution trading program for sulfur dioxides has played an important role in reducing acid rain and in creating new mechanisms for environmental protection.

More challenging have been efforts to reduce pollution from two sectors: motor vehicles (cars and trucks) and coal-fired utilities. Difficulties in these areas have been compounded by Congessionally mandated delays in evaluation and tightening of fuel economy standards, the increased demand for energy in a growing economy, and the increased numbers of vehicle miles driven by an expanding population. These pressures have in turn created pressures to change the standards for priority pollutants to include the consideration of costs as well as public health benefits.

Hazardous Air Pollutants

Hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) developed a higher public profile in 1985, due to the catastrophic release of methyl isocyanate (MIC) at a pesticide production facility in Bhopal, India. Prior to 1990, HAPs were regulated based on complex risk determinations, and standards had been promulgated for only six of them. Frustrated by the slow progress, Congress, in 1990, directed the EPA to establish standards for nearly two hundred HAPs, listed by name in the statute. These standards are called the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs). Congress directed the EPA to establish these standards based on the maximum achievable control technology (MACT). This strategy has resulted in a 90 percent decrease in emissions of toxic air contaminants from regulated industry. In a later phase, the EPA must conduct "residual risk" analyses and tighten the MACT standards if they provide inadequate in protecting the public health. It remains to be seen whether this very complex risk analysis will be successful. Congress directed two studies that are to direct the EPA in the methodology for this effort.

(SEE ALSO: Acid Rain; Ambient Air Quality [Air Pollution]; Carbon Monoxide; Emissions Trading; Hazardous Air Pollutants)

Bibliography

Committee of the Environmental and Occupational Health Assembly of the American Thoracic Society (1996). "Health Effects of Outdoor Air Pollution. State of the Art." American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 153:3–50; 477–498.

National Research Council (1994). Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management (1997) Framework for Environmental Health Risk Management. Washington, DC.

— LYNN R. GOLDMAN

In 1990, Congress passed substantial amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970, strengthening the act in a number of ways. Title I imposed new regulations limiting industrial emissions of ozone, carbon monoxide, particulates, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur oxides, and lead. Title II required new emission standards for automobiles and other mobile sources and created a clean-fuel program. Title III substantially limited the emission of hazardous air pollutants, while Title IV established a program to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants. Title V created an operating permit program for major sources of air pollution that was similar to permit programs found in other major environmental statutes. Title VI implemented the provisions in the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to halt the destruction of the ozone, by banning the emission of certain chemicals. Finally, Title VII added new enforcement provisions, making it easier to punish violators and substantially increasing both civil and criminal penalties for violations of the act.

Supporters of stronger air pollution controls had fought for over a decade to enact many of these provisions, and they succeeded in 1990 only because of important changes in the political landscape. To begin with, public concern over air pollution had grown due to increased awareness about the effects of acid rain and because of startling revelations about the growing hole in the ozone layer. This concern translated into greater support in Congress and in the administration. In particular, President George H. W. Bush, unlike his predecessor, favored modest strengthening of certain environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act. In the Senate, Democrat George Mitchell of Maine, a clean-air proponent, became majority leader in 1989, replacing Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who had worked for years to protect the coal mining industry in his state by blocking air pollution legislation. In the House, Democratic Representative Harry Waxman of California used his positionas chair of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment to support the amendments. Meanwhile, environmental organizations united to form the National Clean Air Coalition, effectively counteracting the influence of the industrial lobby's Clean Air Working Group, even though environmentalists played little role in drafting the amendments. Ultimately, the House voted 401–25 in support of the amendments, the Senate passed the amendments 89–10, and President Bush signed the new clean-air legislation into law on 15 November 1990.

During the 1990s, two forces acted to shape the way the act affected American industry and the environment. First, during the mid-1990s, antienvironmental rhetoric and failed legislative attacks by a new, conservative-led Congress intimidated the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from implementing and enforcing the act as aggressively as the law required. Second, and more generally, the 1990 amendments preserved the clumsy scheme of federalism, where by the EPA oversaw state implementation plans. In theory, if a state failed to meet the standards set by federal regulation, the EPA had the authority to run the clean-air program within the state. In practice, however, the EPA had neither the resources nor the political support to do this. Despite the strong language of the 1990 amendments, and marked improvements in the national air quality, by the end of the millennium many believed American skies, while cleaner, were not clean enough.

Bibliography

Bryner, Gary C. Blue Skies, Green Politics: The Clean Air Act of 1990 and Its Implementation. 2d ed. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1995.

Reitze, Arnold W. "The Legislative History of U.S. Air Pollution Control." Houston Law Review 36 (1999): 696–702.

—Shannon C. Petersen

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