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Environmental News
Dale Armstrong(913) 551-7003
armstrong.dale@epa.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 15, 2004
EPA FINDS ST. LOUIS AREA OUT OF COMPLIANCE WITH OZONE STANDARD
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified air in the St.
Louis metropolitan area as unhealthy and out of compliance with the eight-hour
ozone standard.
The Missouri areas include St. Louis and the counties of St. Louis, Jefferson, Franklin and St. Charles. Counties on the Illinois side are Jersey, Madison, Monroe and St. Clair.
The out-of-compliance designation for 490 counties in approximately 100 metropolitan areas nationwide was announced today by EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt in Washington. Leavitt said the action is an important step in helping states and local governments improve air quality.
Jim Gulliford, EPA Region 7 administrator in Kansas City, Kan., said the implementation rule for ozone non-attainment areas assigns classifications from marginal to extreme. He said the St. Louis “moderate” designation is in the middle of the range and is similar to the classification under the one-hour ozone standard. The greater the extent of the air quality problem, the more rigorous the actions to clean the air must be.
“The difference between the one-hour standard – which St. Louis just barely achieves – and the eight-hour ozone standard is that the eight-hour standard achieves greater health protection for the nation and for the 2.5 million St. Louis area residents than does the one-hour standard,” Gulliford said.
States with areas out of compliance with this standard will develop plans laying out what actions they will take to achieve clean air. They must submit a plan to attain the standard by April 2007 and achieve the standard by April 2010.
Gulliford said EPA will work closely with state and local governments to help non-attainment areas meet eight-hour ozone standards. Reduction in transported pollution will help many areas clean up their air on time.
The Clean Air Ozone Rules target ground-level ozone, a significant health risk, especially for children with asthma. Ground-level ozone forms when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources react chemically in the presence of sunlight.
By contrast, ozone that occurs naturally in the Earth’s upper atmosphere – 10 to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface – shields life on earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.
The Clean Air Rules, including the Ozone Rule, are a suite of actions that will dramatically improve air quality. Three of the rules specifically address the transport of pollution across state borders (the Clean Air Interstate Rule, Clean Air Mercury Rule and Clean Air Non-road Diesel Rule).
The Clean Air Fine Particles Rules target fine particles 2.5 microns
or smaller in size. These fine particles are linked to significant health
problems including increases in premature deaths and a range of serious
respiratory and cardiovascular effects.
