New York Times Editorial - Science ignored, again

New York Times Editorial - Science ignored, again
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 15, 2006



The Bush administration loves to talk about the virtues of "sound science," by which it usually means science that buttresses its own political agenda. But when some truly independent science comes along to threaten that agenda, the administration often ignores or minimizes it. The latest example involves the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to reject the recommendations of experts who had urged a significant tightening of federal standards regulating the amount of soot in the air.

At issue were so-called fine particles, specks of soot that are less than one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair. They penetrate deep into the lungs and circulatory system and have been implicated in tens of thousands of deaths annually. The EPA tightened the daily standard. But it left unchanged the annual standard, which affects chronic exposure and which the medical community regards as more important.

In so doing, the agency rejected the recommendation of its own staff scientists and even that of its 22-member group of outside experts. Stephen Johnson, the agency administrator, claimed there was "insufficient evidence" linking health problems to long-term exposure. How much evidence does Johnson require?

The environmental and medical communities suspect that the administration's main motive was to save the power companies and other sources of pollution about $1.9 billion in new investment that the more protective standard would have required. But here, too, the administration appears to have ignored expert advice.

The agency recently released an analysis showing that in exchange for $1.9 billion in new costs, the stronger annual standards could save as many as 24,000 thousand lives and as much as $50 billion annually in health-care and other costs to society.

In the next year or so, the administration must decide whether to tighten the standards for another pollutant, ground-level ozone, which causes smog and is also associated with respiratory diseases. The scientific advisory committee has tentatively recommended that the ozone standard be tightened. This time Johnson should pay more attention to the scientists and less to the political strategists in the White House.