ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS EPA considers standard for airborne fine particles
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new EPA draft review of air quality standards for particulate matter (PM) recommends that the agency impose a new standard for fine particle pollution (2.5 microns and smaller) and relax current 24hour standards for coarse particles (10 um and smaller). But the recommendation has met with disapproval from outside scientists. In an unusual move the EPA Science Advisory Board's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) in December refused to endorse draft versions of the "criteria document" and "staff paper" that together would serve as the foundation for any rep:nlatory decision on PM This refusal calls i n t o q u p Q t i o n wrtlettifsr ttip» napnmr
will in fact set a npw standard hv the Tanuary 1*197 rnnrt ordered A growing number of epidemiological studies have pointed to PM as the cause of health effects ranging from respiratory problems to death {ES&T, August 1995, p. 360A). The draft staff paper produced by EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards recommends that EPA Administrator Carol Browner consider setting 24-h PM standards "in the range of 25 ug/m 3 to somewhat below 85 pg/m 3 ." The suggested range for annual sure to PM would be from 15 to "less than 30 u e / m 3 " The 24-h PM standard would be substituted for the current 24-h PM standard of 150 pg/m 3 which could be dronned EPA acknowledged that the staff paper and the encyclopedic criteria document that support it were rushed into publication last year largely because of pressure from the American Lung Association, which in 1994 won a court case forcing EPA to establish new PM standards (or decide to keep the current ones) by 1997. That judgment also limited CASAC to a
Diesel-fueled trucks would be directly affected by a fine particulate standard.
single review of the draft documents to help ensure that the deadline was met. Although a second review was allowed in December, CASAC members continue to chafe at the tight schedule (which allowed only a few weeks to assess more than 2000 pages of material) and have asked for further review of documents they believe are still flawed. In a January 5 letter to Browner, CASAC chairman George Wolff of the General Motors Corporation Environmental and Energy staff wrote: "Although the [EPA] paper made an admirable effort in producing the Staff Paper under a tight timetable, the current draft does not provide an adequately articulated scientific basis for making regulatory decisions concerning a PM National Ambient Air Quality Standard." Among the problems cited by CASAC were the failure to acknowledge the lack of direct biological or clinical evidence for implicating PM in health problems insufficient evidence that PM (as onnosed to larppr particlps or air pollution in general) is thp causative agent and a lack of dptailed justification for thp qnantitativp ranups prnnn«pH th PM «ta da H CASAC also worries that both
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the criteria document and the staff paper rely too heavily on unpublished, non-peer-reviewed research, much of it by EPA contractors. "The panel is concerned that the excessive use of nonpeer-reviewed reports will set a precedent that will erode the scientific credibility of the NAAQS review process," Wolff wrote. Despite the criticisms, some CASAC members favored approving the criteria document and at the December meeting said Wolff Others believe the proposed fine particle standard isn't stringent enough according to John Bachmann of EPA's air quality officp EPA would like another six months to address CASAC's concerns and revise the staff paper, and it could receive another extension by the court to do that. But even that much extra time may not be enough to put to rest all the uncertainties, said Wolff. "I think it would be very difficult for [EPA] to get to an airtight case [for changing the PM standard] right now. There are a lot of data gaps." EPA agrees, according to Bachmann, and the agency's Office of Research and Development has singled out PM as a high-priority area for further research. But he
0013-936X/96/0929-68A$12.00/0 © 1996 American Chemical Society
argued that the agency would be prudent to propose a regulation in 1997 anyway, before all the scientific uncertainty is nailed down. Assuming that EPA promulgates a new regulation next January, it would still take another three years to monitor and classify areas for attainment or nonattainment of the proposed standard, and another year before states would have to submit pollution control plans. Any new PM standard would therefore not become law until 2002 at the earliest, which would give the agency five more years to conduct research on PM "before [regulated industries] start spending real money." Bachmann acknowledged that a PM2 5 cap at the lower end of the proposed range "ultimately could be a very expensive standard." Unlike PM10 particulates, which generally consist of dust and other windblown matter, PM2 5 particulates tend to result directly or indirectly from combustion products from such sources as diesel-fueled vehicles, sulfur-emitting utility plants, and other industries. Bachmann emphasized that the only expense from 1997 to 2002 would be in setting up monitoring networks and that governments would bear much of that cost. According to the current courtimposed deadline, Browner has to decide this June whether to change the standard for PM. Unless the documents are revised, the agency faces that decision without CASAC's official s eal of approval. Said Wolff, " [EFA] basically uses CASAC as a shield to avoid lawsuits. And they're not going to have that shield." Which is why, without trying to guess what Browner ultimately will decide, Bachmann predicted, "There is no way this agency is going to make a final decision for something so momentous on [the basis of] something that the scientific community doesn't feel is of good quality." —TONY REICHHARDT
NEWSSCIENCE Industry opposition stops release of EPA sediment contamination point source report An EPA analysis that ranks the importance of point sources in sediment contamination nationwide will not be released because of industry criticism, according to EPA. The report, "National Sediment Contaminant Point Source Inventory: Analysis of Release Data for 1992" will "never be a final EPA document and will never be transmitted to Congress," according to Betsey Southerland, acting director of EPA's Office of Science and Technology, Standards and Applied Science Division. The report will, however, be available to anyone requesting it from her office she said The point source survey was to be the first stage of EPA's threepart effort to meet the requirements of the Water Resources Development Act of 1992. Surveys of contaminated sites and nonpoint sources are the other components of EPA's National Sediment Inventory. Point source data for 1994 will be included in a different EPA report but only for sites where there is sediment monitoring data said Southerland. That report is expected to be out in draft form this spring. Critics argued that without information about specific site conditions, point source data could suggest problem areas that do not exist and miss other sites, an argument backed by Keith Philips of the Washington State Department of Ecology, who reviewed an early version of the report. "Site information is very important," he said. "A point source discharge entering a quiet body of water may well cause a problem, but if the ters a high-energy environor tidal zone for
Critics argued that an inventory of potential sediment contamination point sources would be misleading unless combined with site-specific data. EPA and states are gathering sediment data through a cooperative program. EPA Region 5 and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality staff collect sediment core samples from the Saginaw River (above).
example—dispersion mitigates the potential problem." Industry groups "convinced EPA" not to publish the national point source data by itself, according to agency officials. A coalition of 39 Great Lakes conservation and environmental groups had called for the report's release in a December letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Sierra Club Great Lakes policy specialist Patricia King stated that "the point source inventory is important for targeting monitoring to locate contaminated sites that have been missed by other screening methods." "We're extremely disappointed that EPA has allowed the chemical industry to censor this basic
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