Chính quyền Biden thắt chặt các giới hạn đối với ô nhiễm không khí chết người

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The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday tightened limits on fine industrial particles, one of the most common and deadliest forms of air pollution (ô nhiễm không khí), for the first time in a decade.

Business groups immediately objected (phản đối), saying the new regulation (quy định) could raise costs and hurt manufacturing jobs across the country. Public health organizations said the pollution rules would save lives and strengthen the economy by reducing hospitalizations (nhập viện) and lost workdays.

Mr. Regan estimated that the rule would prevent 4,500 premature deaths every year and 290,000 lost workdays because of illness. The E.P.A. maintained that the rule also would deliver as much as $46 billion in net health benefits in the first year that the standards would be fully implemented (thực hiện đầy đủ).

The tiny particles are known as PM 2.5 because they are 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller. By comparison, an average human hair is about 70 microns in diameter.

The law requires the E.P.A. to review the latest science and to consider updating the PM 2.5 standard every five years, though it had not been strengthened since 2012 under the Obama administration.

The Trump administration did conduct a review (tiến hành xem xét). In a draft 457-page scientific assessment of the risks associated with keeping or strengthening the fine soot pollution rule, career scientists at the E.P.A. said that an estimated 45,000 deaths annually were linked to PM 2.5. The scientists wrote that if the rule were tightened to nine micrograms per cubic meter, annual deaths would fall by about 27 percent, or 12,150 people a year.

sourceL nytimes,