After being sued, EPA says it won't delay Obama-era regulation on ozone


Late Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was no longer delaying a 2015 regulation on ozone, a gas formed from smokestacks and tailpipes that causes smog and has been linked to lung disease and asthma in children.
The Obama administration had set a national standard for ozone of 70 parts per billion, and in June, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt put off the Oct. 1 deadline for deciding which areas of the country needed to meet new ozone standards, The New York Times reports; Pruitt wanted to delay the requirement that states submit measurements of their 2015 ozone levels, saying the EPA needed to evaluate a "host of complex issues" before deciding which states met the standard. The EPA reversed course after 16 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit earlier this week, challenging the delay.
Environmental groups were pleased with the decision. "Pruitt's lawless attempt to delay stronger ozone-pollution protections would have put thousands of lives at risk," Lori Ann Burd, director of the environmental program at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. "It's disturbing how much pressure it took to get this common-sense step from the guy in charge of protecting the air we breathe."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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