Trump EPA Delaying Clean Air Standards - But Issues Warnings On Smoke From Candles, Incense

[hatrack]

EDIT

That, however, is not what the EPA has been doing. In two tweets sent from the official U.S. EPA account during the month of June, the EPA singled out just two potential triggers for asthma attacks: incense, and bonfires.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

“They are just distracting from the larger issues by focusing on the really small ones,” Liz Purchia, a former EPA communications official under the Obama administration, told ThinkProgress. “I’d love to see the last time they talked about carbon pollution from power plants and the threat that they posed to public health.”

Just days before the EPA sent the first tweet, warning about the dangers of incense and scented candles, the agency announced that it would be giving states another year to develop air quality plans meant to comply with the agency’s 2015 ground-level ozone standard, which created stricter limits for ozone pollution. Ozone pollution is a known trigger for asthma, especially in children, who are at greater risk of exposure to ozone because they tend to spend more time outside than adults — something that the EPA’s own website acknowledges.

Days after sending the tweet about incense and scented candles, the EPA also announced it would seek to a two-year delay in the implementation of a rule requiring oil and gas companies to detect and repair leaks of methane and other air pollutants from oil and gas wells. In announcing the delay, the EPA acknowledged that it could have a disproportionate impact on the health of children, but argued that delay was worthwhile because it would save the oil and gas industry roughly $173 million.

“It’s pretty unbelievable,” Purchia said. “They are using smoke and mirrors to make it appear like they are trying to protect public health, and meanwhile they are doing everything that they can do rollback regulations and work with the fossil fuel industry to bend to their will. They are showing a willful blindness towards the health of the American public.”

EDIT

https://thinkprogress.org/epa-tweets-about-scented-candles-causing-asthma-forgets-pollution-7adf54417f56