After receiving feedback from stakeholders including oil refiners and auto manufacturers, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed standards in March that could greatly reduce vehicle pollution and increase public health. Passing the mandate, which would go into effect in 2017, would come at a price to consumers, but the EPA states that the benefits could outweigh the costs by as much as a factor of seven.
The mandate has four main goals: (1) reduce volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides by 80 percent; (2) establish a 70 percent tighter limit on particulate matter; (3) reduce fuel vapor emissions to near zero; and (4) reduce toxic air pollutants, including benzene and 1,3-butadiene by 40 percent. The standards include reducing the sulfur content of gasoline from to 10 parts per million from 30 ppm. By comparison, ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) is capped at 15 ppm. The EPA estimates the rules would cost refineries less than a penny, and translate to roughly $130 per vehicle by 2025 (presumably from the increased fuel cost).
The costs may seem burdensome to some, but the EPA cites numerous health and economic benefits to outweigh them. By 2030, the Agency estimates the rules would prevent up to 2,400 premature deaths, 23,000 respiratory ailments in children, 3,200 hospital visits, and 1.8 million lost or restricted school and work days. Total health-related benefits would amount to $8 to $23 billion per year.
Growing up in cleaner environments can also yield developmental benefits to kids and provide huge benefits to society. In Wall Street Journal article focused on the neuroscience of violent behavior, the rising level of lead in the U.S. between 1950 and the 1970s is highly correlated with increases in violence 20 years later (when individuals were in their teens and early 20s). As the article states, lead is a neurotoxin that damages the prefrontal region, which regulates behavior. As mandates began to outlaw lead in gasoline, violence dropped correspondingly in the 1970s and ‘80s. Though it cannot be certain, the author argues that “no other single factor can account for both the inexplicable rise in violence in the U.S. until 1993 and the precipitous drop since then.”
