Unhealthy Air Warning

(AUGUSTA) – Maine DEP has issued an unhealthy air warning for, September 5^th.  With this news thousands of people across the region with asthma and other lung diseases will be forced to go indoors, limit their exercise, and make other restrictions to their daily routines.  No one should have to live this way. 

Ozone has been compared to getting a ‘sunburn’ on the lungs.  It causes shortness of breath, inflammation of the lungs and airways, increased susceptibility to respiratory infections, and an increased need for medical treatment and hospital admission for people with lung and heart disease.  Make no mistake, high ozone levels affect all of us.  It impacts our health and it drives up health costs for everyone.

But is today’s warning really the first time we have been at risk this year?  Unfortunately, the answer is probably ‘no’.  Current EPA standards are far weaker than the scientific data supports, meaning we are not being alerted to all unhealthy air days. 

Recently the EPA’s independent Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy confirming that the current national air quality standard for ozone fails to protect public health as required by law and that it should be significantly strengthened to more adequately reflect current science.

These scientists, physicians, researchers and air pollution experts have been reviewing hundreds of studies and analyses of the health effects of ozone for several years. They are recommending that a level of 60 parts per billion (ppb) would protect public health with an adequate margin of safety. 

The Lung Association calls on the EPA to heed the advice of these independent scientists by updating the federal ozone standard to 60 ppb in order to protect the public from dangerous and potentially deadly ozone pollution.

The reality is, here in Maine we are under siege. We are being barraged by pollution from outside our borders. This pollution is arriving from the factories, power plants, trucks and cars in the Midwest and south of us.  New England, more than any other region, needs strong laws at the federal level to reduce the pollution that is rolling into our states without our consent or control.

Our air quality affects our health, our ability to work, and our opportunities for recreation.  Unhealthy air also costs us millions of dollars annually in avoidable health care costs to individuals, government and businesses.  We are counting on the entire Maine congressional delegation to defend the Clean Air Act and ensure that EPA standards are tightened to reflect current scientific research.  We need Congress to put people and health before politics.