Mr. Chairman, Senator Baucus, members of the committee, good morning and thank you for this opportunity to testify on the EPA’s proposed revisions to the national ambient air quality standards for particulate matter and ozone -- better known as soot and smog.

Appearing with me today will be EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, Mary Nichols, and Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, Dr. Robert Huggett.

In the interest of saving time -- and to get to your questions as quickly as possible -- I ask that my full testimony be included in the hearing record. I will summarize it.

Mr. Chairman, let me begin by saluting both you and Senator Baucus for your longstanding and steadfast leadership on environmental issues. As you know, it was a spirit of bipartisanship that launched the Clean Air Act under President Nixon more than a quarter century ago.b And it was that same bipartisan spirit -- with this committee in the lead -- that led to the strengthening of the Act under President Bush in 1990.

Today, under President Clinton, the commitment to clean air remains strong.

Thanks to your leadership -- and to the success of the Clean Air Act -- many millions of Americans are breathing cleaner air. Millions more of our children are protected from the harmful effects of breathing polluted air.

Make no mistake, the Clean Air Act has worked for America. It has helped protect the public health.  And it has done so without holding us back. In fact, since 1970, emissions of the six major air pollutants have dropped by 29 percent while the population has grown by 28 percent and the gross domestic product has nearly doubled.

Economic growth and cleaner air.  Now that’s a level of progress we can all be proud of.

Which brings us to today’s question: “Where do we go from here?”

Do we rest on our laurels? Do we stand pat? Do we say that, because we are making progress, there is no need to revisit our standards, no need to reassess them in light of any new scientific findings, no need to ensure that they are adequate to protect the public health?

Wisely, the Clean Air Act does not let us make this choice. The Act contemplates the march of technology. It envisions that science will always come up with better ways to understand the health effects of the air we breathe -- and that the standards of the 1970s may not be right for the 21st Century.

The Act includes language directing EPA to review the public health standards for major air pollutants at least every five years, in order to ensure that they reflect the best current science. It also lays out a specific procedure to obtain the best available, current science and, if needed, revise the standards. This is to ensure that we never get to the point where the government tells Americans that their air is healthy to breathe, when the scientific community knows that, in fact, it is not.

As you know, EPA is now under court-ordered deadline to fulfill this obligation and to publish a final decision on revisions to the particulate matter standards by mid July. One of the accomplishments in this proposal of which I am most proud is the fact that, for the first time, we are simultaneously proposing air quality standards for more than one pollutant. We do this largely for the purpose of allowing state and local governments and industry to develop common sense and cost-effective strategies for meeting them, and to provide the American public with the most accurate information about the quality of their air.

In accordance with what the law requires, EPA asked an independent panel scientists and technical experts from academia, research institutes, public health organizations and industry to review our work and the underlying health studies -- and to make recommendations.

That panel -- known as the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, or CASAC -- over a four-year period conducted 11 meetings, all open to the public, with a total of 124 hours of public discussion. Panel members have reviewed thousands of pages of materials prepared by EPA and integrating the best available science. EPA has held further public meetings, at which hundreds of representatives from industry, state and local governments, organizations -- as well as members of the public -- have offered their views.

In fact, I can safely say that this has been the most extensive scientific review and public outreach process ever conducted by EPA for public health standards.

Over the course of this process, we looked at more than 5,000 scientific studies on the health effects of smog and soot. This stack of paper, Mr. Chairman, is merely the bibliography of more than 250 scientific studies, covering more than 10 years, focusing on human health effects -- the ones that CASAC determined should be the basis for public health standards. Page after page, study after study -- all thoroughly debated, peer reviewed and published.  For ozone, 185 studies. For particulate matter, 86 studies. Study after study indicating that our current air standards are not adequately protecting public health and that they should be strengthened.

And, after a thorough review of this evidence, the conclusion of the independent panel is that the most recent scientific information provides sufficient evidence that serious health effects are occurring in children, the elderly and other sensitive populations at particulate matter and ozone concentrations at and below our existing standards.

Clearly, the science calls for action -- action to protect millions of American, and especially millions of American children, from harmful air pollution. In a most compelling way, the science leads us to the new, stronger standards that EPA has proposed for smog and soot.

For smog, we have proposed to change the standard from 0.12 parts per million of ozone measured over one hour to a standard of .08 parts per million measured over eight hours. In effect, the 0.12 one-hour standard is roughly equivalent to .09 when measured over eight hours. To provide the needed measure of public health protection that the science calls for, we propose to change the concentration from .09 to .08.

[Chart #1] As displayed on the chart, Mr. Chairman, this new ozone standard, if adopted, would protect nearly 50 million more Americans from the adverse health effects of smog -- nearly 50 million more than we protect under the current standard -- 13 million of whom are children.

Remember, children are among the most vulnerable to polluted air. They breathe in 50 percent more air per pound of body weight than do adults. And many of them spend a great deal of time outdoors during the summer, when ground level ozone is at its most severe levels.

In setting these standards, the law requires us to provide a margin of safety. Certainly, there is no more appropriate application of that requirement than to ensure that our children, simply by playing outdoors, are not doing irreversible damage to their health.

For particulate matter, we would maintain our current standard on the larger, “coarse” particles, and we propose a new standard on smaller particles -- those at or below 2.5 micrometers in diameter -- which the current, best available science has determined are damaging to human health.

Again, the law requires us to provide an adequate margin of safety in protecting the public health.

[Chart #2] And when you strengthen the PM standard the way we are proposing, look at what happens here on this chart -- each year, 20,000 fewer premature deaths, 250,000 fewer cases of aggravated asthma, 250,000 fewer incidences of acute respiratory problems in children, 60,000 fewer cases of bronchitis and 9,000 fewer hospital admissions.

Taken together, these proposed standards for smog and soot would increase the total number of Americans protected to 133 million, including 40 million children.

Mr. Chairman, this is a tough issue -- certainly the toughest I’ve had to face in my four years at EPA. But I believe the American people want us to follow the law. They want us to protect the public health and do so with the latest, best available science.

And the best, current, peer-reviewed, fully-debated scientific conclusions are that too many Americans are not being protected by the current standards for these pollutants. Based on all we have seen to date, we believe there is quite literally no other alternative but to propose to strengthen the public health standards.

But that doesn’t mean that there is no role for the practicalities of attaining these protections. There is such a role when it comes to implementing the standards. In that case, it certainly is appropriate to consider costs. And I want to assure you that, if these new standards are adopted, EPA will work with all who are affected -- state governments, local governments, community leaders, businesses large and small -- to find cost-effective and common sense strategies for meeting them.

For my part, I have written to all 50 of the nation’s governors, encouraging them to participate in the current standard-setting process and, should the revised standards be adopted, inviting them to work with EPA on finding ways to meet them.

I believe this nation, and particularly its industries, can rise to the challenge. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.

I am also aware that these proposed standards are controversial and that not everyone is happy with them. I would remind the committee the period of public comment is still in effect. We take very seriously our obligation to carefully consider all public comment before making a final decision.

At the same time, let me express my concern about the direction of the public debate on this. This is a vital issue of tremendous importance to millions of American families. It is not about backyard barbeques and lawnmowers. It is not, as was heard on radio ads this morning, about banning fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Instead, Mr. Chairman, this is about whether our children will be able to go outside on the Fourth of July and enjoy those fireworks. It is about finding ways in which we can all work together to ensure that the air we breathe is healthy, and that our standards protect the greatest possible number of Americans.

Over the history of the Clean Air Act, the goal is -- and always has been -- clean air. Nothing in that has ever changed.

What has changed is science -- which is forever bringing advancements and innovations to improve the quality of our lives. Science now tell us that our air pollution standards are not adequate to protect the public’s health.

Let us listen to science. Let us respond as we have before. Let us work together toward common ground, to improve the quality of our air and to protect the health of our citizens.

Let us do it for our children.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to answer any questions that you and other members of the committee may have.