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.
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