Trump’s Foes Cite Virus to Attack His Environmental Record

(Bloomberg) -- The effects of air pollution during the pandemic have emerged as a partisan flash point in Washington with Democrats accusing the Trump administration of jeopardizing public health by weakening anti-smog safeguards despite the president’s boast of having “the cleanest and purest air on the planet.”

Since Covid-19 began spreading throughout the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has finalized rules easing fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles and attacking the legal basis of requirements to capture mercury pollution at power plants. The agency also opted not to strengthen air-quality requirements governing soot last month. And it is now seeking to give retailers more time to sell off their inventory of outdated residential wood heaters that emit more smoke -- and potentially lethal air pollution -- than new models with better emission controls.

“While the rest of the country works around the clock to combat and overcome this deadly respiratory pandemic, the Trump EPA has been spearheading a pandemic of pollution,” Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, said during an oversight hearing Wednesday.

Carper said the EPA is “taking actions that will increase air pollution and put public health at even greater risk.” He released a five-page report from Senate Democratic staff tying the pandemic to Trump administration moves he said undermine air quality.

Republicans have pushed back aggressively on the line of attack.

“The EPA has done a number of things in the past several months to help fight the outbreak,” agency chief Andrew Wheeler told the senators as he outlined new research and hundreds of disinfectant approvals.

He said recent rule changes do not undermine public health and instead build on decades of improvements in U.S. air quality. “Our air today is over 74% cleaner than it was in 1970,” he said.

Emerging Research

Lawmakers are pressing the EPA to account for its plan to use discretion in enforcing some regulatory requirements, including deadlines to regularly file reports with the agency.

In a letter to Wheeler on Wednesday, 60 members of the House and Senate, led by Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, said that it was “critical that the EPA do everything it can” to ensure a nationwide network of air quality monitors continue operating amid the pandemic, especially given indications of a link between pollution and Covid-19 complications.

In an earlier exchange at the oversight hearing, Wheeler told Duckworth that air monitors “are required to be up and running” and are continuing to provide automated data. “We are still getting all of the data that we normally get from our air monitoring” across the country, Wheeler said.

Democrats are seizing on emerging research indicating that air pollution may heighten the risk of complications from Covid-19 and earlier coronaviruses.

“We are in the middle of a health crisis attacking people’s lungs” and “breathing bad air can make the impacts of coronavirus worse,” said Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

A study conducted in China in 2003 found higher fatality rates among people infected with SARS who had also been exposed to greater levels of air pollution versus those with lower exposure. And a Harvard School of Public Health study released last month found that a 1 microgram increase in fine airborne particle pollution in a cubic meter of air would contribute to an increase in Covid-19-related deaths. The increase was initially estimated at 15%, though study authors subsequently modified the conclusion and estimated an 8% increase.

Republicans have responded by highlighting that shifting estimate and other potential shortcomings in the Harvard study, which was not peer-reviewed.

Study Criticism

Representative Andy Harris of Maryland earlier this month urged federal agencies to scrutinize -- and potentially debunk -- it. “It is incumbent upon you to accurately communicate the best available scientific understanding of the virus and the factors that may influence patient outcomes” in part “to ensure American citizens are not misinformed,” Harris said in a letter to the EPA and Department of Health and Human Services.

Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, on Wednesday cited reports calling the Harvard study “riddled with flaws.”

Wheeler also has defended agency rule changes on a case-by-case basis. For instance on Wednesday he said the decision to give companies more time to unload their inventory of older wood heaters is necessary to prevent some companies from going bankrupt because the coronavirus has prevented anticipated sales. And, he stressed, those older heaters still abide by recent, Obama-era pollution requirements that are just a few years old.

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