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EPA Will Reconsider the Ozone NAAQS — What Is An Adequate Margin of Safety, Anyway?

Law and Environment

On Friday, EPA announced that it was reconsidering its 2020 decision to leave the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone unchanged. However, EPA stated that it: will reconsider the decision to retain the ozone NAAQS in a manner that adheres to rigorous standards of scientific integrity.

Ozone 100
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Supreme Court Sidelines Science, Threatens Public Health: These Rules-in-Progress Show What’s at Stake

Union of Concerned Scientists

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were developed to replace a type of chemical that impacted the ozone layer in our upper atmosphere, but these replacements are potent greenhouse gases. This is a major federal law that governs if a chemical will be regulated, limited, or even banned.

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The Origins of Climate Awareness in the Legal Academy

Legal Planet

Today, climate change is the central, though by no means the only, concern in environmental law. The earliest mentions of these terms in the law review literature came in the late 1970s, and only one of the pre-1985 discussions took a comprehensive look at the problem. Third, there was so much else going on in environmental law.

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Protecting Public Health Is Complicated. But Science Can Help, and the Time Is Now.

Union of Concerned Scientists

However, since major US environmental laws are enacted to protect the air, water, and land separately (i.e. the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act), as a result, EPA programs are often implemented narrowly, not holistically.

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State Air Regulations Can Go Above and Beyond National Standards 

Legal Planet

States and local air quality regulators have the legal authority to set particulate matter (PM), ozone, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions standards and adopt regulations for these pollutants when they are already in attainment of the national ambient air quality standards ( NAAQS ) set by the U.S.

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EPA’s Power Plant Carbon Rules Are Critical—and Complex. Here’s What to Know, and What to Watch.

Union of Concerned Scientists

Multiple lines of analysis make clear that regardless of how cheap wind and solar power get, without directly addressing pollution from coal and gas plants, the country’s clean energy transition will not happen fast enough. Section 111 of the Clean Air Act constrains how EPA sets standards—but gives states wide latitude in implementation.

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The Supreme Court & Interstate Pollution

Legal Planet

By law, that suit had to be brought in the D.C. About half these states went to court to challenge the disapproval of their own plans and received stays of the disapprovals from regional courts of appeals. The result is that the plan is now in effect in only 11 upwind states. The challengers filed suit to vacate the revised plan entirely.