Lowering Clean Air Standards Puts Latinos At Risk
By Mildred Real, Voces Verdes Advisory Board member and CEO of America Verde
Voces Verdes is outraged at President Obama’s announcement this morning asking the Environmental Protection Agency to drop the ozone standard. The White House’s decision leaves hundreds of millions of people in the United States facing an unacceptable level of risk from the air we breathe.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that close to 1 of every 2 Latinos live in areas that frequently violate the ozone standard.
As Latino businesses, organizations and leaders, we cannot look the other way when a decision that affects our community so greatly is made. With one out of every two Latinos in America living in areas that frequently violate the ozone standard; the impact of this decision on our community cannot be underestimated.
This decision benefits polluters while leaving 23 million Latinos, our family members, friends, and colleagues, at risk. The president has chosen to ignore the public health benefit by leaving in place standards set by the Bush administration in 2008 that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s recognized, “were “not legally defensible given the scientific evidence.”
The president should have followed the mandate of the Clean Air Act and the Supreme Court and allowed EPA to do its job instead of being swayed by polluter’s overblown claims about regulatory burdens.
The growing Latino population –like so many others in the U.S. today–cannot bear the burden of the additional unforeseen costs that come from asthma attacks, medication, hospitalizations or school or work days missed due to high ozone levels. Our country needs healthy people in order to thrive.
Voces Verdes and our allies have supported strengthening the ozone standards and continue to call on the White House to support other critical air pollution rules. We are counting on you to stand strong.
[Photo By Wonderlane]