75-10-A5
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The EPA Strikes Again
TranscriptWith friends like the EPA, can our environment afford any enemies? I'll be right back. Though it was born of a sincere and widespread desire to clean up our air and water the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, E.P.A. is beginning to look like the goose that laid the rotten egg. On balance it seems to be creating more problems than it's been solving. To take one example but a very important one the E.P.A. has taken the position that catalytic converters are essential in automobiles in order to meet the standards it is set for exhaust emissions. Now according to E.P.A., lead must be removed from gasoline because it will mess up the catalytic converters which have been mandated for most 1975 automobiles and are part of the E.P.A.'s overall clean air standards target of September 1978. Earlier the E.P.A. used the argument that lead in gasoline was bad per se but a federal court recently ruled that leaded gasoline hasn't been proved harmful to anybody yet. So that argument's out the window, in fact in that Alice in Wonderland world of bureaucracy no fewer than five other federal government agencies studying the effects of leaded gasoline came up with no data to verify harm from it and in fact they questioned the E.P.A.'s conclusions. But back to catalytic converters. In an earnest effort to meet the challenge, the auto companies spent huge sums in research and development to equip their current models with these gadgets. One of the big three spent a hundred million dollars alone in its program, the result of all this effort, catalytic converters that do a fine job of eliminating harmful hydrocarbons but which, wonder of wonders, turn sulfur into sulfates, a substance more harmful to you and me than those emissions they're controlling. Now this discovery wasn't made the day the first 1975 automobile rolled off the assembly line. No the problem of harmful byproducts from the converters was raised at least 18 months ago by E.P.A. researchers themselves. Guess who overrode their concerns, none other than the head of E.P.A. Russell Train. He said the development and installation of the catalytic converters couldn't be held up. His reason to do so, quote, "Would throw off the into emission control strategy." Unquote. The key word is strategy, what he's really talking about is environmental politics, the concern about reactions from the more extreme elements of the environmental movement and their noisy cohorts in Congress and state legislators. There are some interesting and expensive side problems too. Not only are you paying for the catch-22 converter demanded by government on your new card, about 160 dollars a copy, but you're probably also paying for your gas station's new pump for non-leaded gas since the tank spout on the car is too narrow for conventional nozzles. The new sulfate problem won't go away, of course, so even Mr. Train has finally had to take notice. Armed with an E.P.A. study which says that sulfuric acid missed from the catalytic converters could, quote, "Represent a very real health hazard that would come about over a period of time." Unquote. Train has announced a delay in the '78 clean air deadline and plans to have his agency propose a method of controlling the sulfates effective the following year. So now that the E.P.A. is set about to ban harmless products, causing new harmful ones to be generated and has cost you and all the other taxpayers untold millions of dollars. They could spend just a few more dollars to erect a sign over their bureau in Washington which reads "Caution this Federal agency is harmful to your health." This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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