Smog isn’t just unsightly, it’s a corrosive air pollutant that seriously harms human health and the environment. At high enough levels it impairs breathing, inflames lungs, sends people to the hospital—and can even kill. Smog has been linked to increased risk of lung disease and premature death.
In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized more protective health standards for smog pollution. We need your help to make sure communities meet those standards.
The next step in the process of rolling out stronger smog standards is for the EPA to officially identify which areas of the country need to improve their air quality. But Big Oil and its allies—never fans of regulations that would clean up our air—have been working hard to undo any efforts to reduce smog pollution, by urging the EPA not to designate certain areas as having unhealthy air even though they really do.
Once the new smog standards are implemented, the EPA estimates they will save hundreds of lives, prevent 230,000 asthma attacks in children, and keep kids from missing 160,000 school days. We have until February 5 to tell the EPA to protect public health and clean up our air.
Securing these new protections was no easy task; it took years of Earthjustice litigation, comments to the agency from over 500,000 concerned residents, and the voices of affected community residents speaking out at numerous public hearings. Youth, nurses, teachers, health professionals—hundreds of people who live in areas with dirty air—showed up at hearings across the country to tell their personal stories of friends and family members struggling to breathe.
We need to keep up the pressure. If Big Oil had its way, the hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. who live in a county where smog pollution is particularly severe wouldn’t get needed protective measures against dirty air.
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