Friday, March 19, 2010

Air Quality improving?


Air Quality is improving in much of the US

Do we really need all the regulatory programs at the federal and state levels of government?
Do they really work to improve the quality of our air and water? Are they worth their cost in terms of regulatory burden and costs of compliance? In short, yes! To some extent, our regulatory programs are a trial and error affair. We can't always know the ultimate effectiveness of a new program nor its ultimate costs. We can't always predict the economic benefits of new regulations either since they invariably lead to innovation and generate new inventions and jobs.
The US has been monitoring the quality of our air and water for decades, so we can track the effectiveness of our programs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making the most recent data available. Air pollution impacts public health, the environment, and the Earth’s climate, and understanding these impacts are important priorities for the agency.EPA regulatory actions and voluntary efforts have led to cleaner cars, industries and consumer products, that in turn have contributed to improvements in the nation's air. They have also led to developments of new pollution control systems for power plants and other major sources such as Selective Catalytic Reduction, a technology that removes Nitrogen Oxides from emissions by converting it to Nitrogen and water.

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