{"id":39025,"date":"2014-10-28T10:37:47","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T15:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=39025"},"modified":"2014-10-28T10:37:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T15:37:47","slug":"texas-enviromental-regulators-question-ozones-impact-on-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/10\/28\/texas-enviromental-regulators-question-ozones-impact-on-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Enviromental Regulators Question Ozone&#8217;s Impact On Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_39027\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-39027\" alt=\"A pollution haze over Houston East End.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/10\/A-haze-over-Houston-East-End-the-citys-ozone-pollution-violates-the-federal-Clean-Air-Act800px-300x196.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/10\/A-haze-over-Houston-East-End-the-citys-ozone-pollution-violates-the-federal-Clean-Air-Act800px-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/10\/A-haze-over-Houston-East-End-the-citys-ozone-pollution-violates-the-federal-Clean-Air-Act800px-620x405.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/10\/A-haze-over-Houston-East-End-the-citys-ozone-pollution-violates-the-federal-Clean-Air-Act800px.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Dave Fehling<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pollution haze over Houston East End.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The Texas agency that regulates industries that pollute, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is questioning federal research into the health threat posed by breathing ozone and is using its website to publish articles that critics call \u201cprovocative\u201d and \u201cmisleading.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>First, some background. Houston has an ozone pollution problem and so do Dallas and big cities across the country that for years have exceeded federal limits for ozone.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/174087228&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ozone forms when air pollution from industrial plants and vehicles reacts to sunlight. Breathing ozone has long been considered harmful especially to people with conditions like asthma and heart disease.<\/p>\n<p>In coming months, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue even stricter, lower limits for ozone which could put even more Texas cities in violation of the federal Clean Air Act. That could cost industry money to upgrade equipment to reduce pollution. And in Texas, where the state has repeatedly \u2014 and for the most part, unsuccessfully \u2014 sued the EPA to block pollution regulations, state officials are questioning whether ozone at current levels is really all that bad.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not political. I\u2019m a scientist, and can back up everything I say with data,\u201d said Michael Honeycutt, a toxicologist with the TCEQ.<\/p>\n<p>In an article he authored on the TCEQ\u2019s website, he said the federal government\u2019s data actually show lowering ozone could be bad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHouston and Los Angeles are going to lose people, ok? According to EPA, people are going to die from lowering these standards,\u201d Honeycutt told News 88.7.<\/p>\n<p>Which of course would be exactly opposite of what the EPA says it\u2019s trying to do, that is, lower ozone to improve people\u2019s health. Honeycutt bases his findings on what he says he found in the EPA\u2019s 660-page ozone report. Some 222 pages into the report, there is a reference to studies done in Houston and LA which estimated there could be increases in deaths there from lowering ozone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s happening is, we\u2019re reducing it in some areas but we\u2019re actually increasing it in other areas. EPA\u2019s own data shows this. You\u2019ll be decreasing ozone levels in the suburbs but you\u2019ll actually be increasing ozone levels in the inner cities. Where there are poorer people. So this has a disproportionate impact on poorer people. And this is EPA\u2019s own data saying this,\u201d said Honeycutt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re not a proponent of lowering the standard, because if you lower the standard you\u2019re just going to move around where it\u2019s formed. And it\u2019s going to hit the inner cities harder,\u201d said Honeycutt.<\/p>\n<p>Honeycutt\u2019s views were reported last week in the Texas Tribune and drew derision from critics including a brief article in Salon with the headline \u201cTexas Scientist: We don\u2019t need to reduce smog because we spend 90 percent of our time indoors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Honeycutt told News 88.7, \u201cThey\u2019re saying I\u2019m saying people should stay indoors. Not at all; actually I encourage people to go outdoors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But other scientists question how Honeycutt used the EPA data.Dr. Arch Carson at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston has done years of research into air pollution\u2019s effect on people\u2019s health and read Honeycutt\u2019s article at our request.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that\u2019s a misinterpretation of EPA\u2019s data,\u201d said Dr. Carson. \u201cHe\u2019s interpreted the output of the models of EPAs data to indicate that if you reduce ozone, you\u2019ll cause more deaths. And that\u2019s not at all what it says.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And regardless of how you interpret the EPA\u2019s data, Carson said their own on-going research at UT shows that when ozone peaks in Houston, more people get sick.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can show those pretty dramatically by looking at actual data. Were actually about to publish a paper that looks at those emergency room visits in Harris County,\u201d Dr. Carson told News 88.7. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely black and white.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The TCEQ begs to differ, saying on its website that some studies show no such relationship.<\/p>\n<p>The EPA responded to our questions, saying in an email that there are \u201ca thousand new studies\u201d linking ozone to health problems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn independent panel of leading experts that advises the agency has concluded that reducing ozone and improving air quality would lead to broad health benefits, including reducing the overall number of ozone-related deaths,\u201d said the EPA\u2019s emailed response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Texas agency that regulates industries that pollute, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is questioning federal research into the health threat posed by breathing ozone and is using its website to publish articles that critics call \u201cprovocative\u201d and \u201cmisleading.\u201d First, some background. Houston has an ozone pollution problem and so do Dallas and big [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[33],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39029,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39025\/revisions\/39029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}