Speak Up Against Power Plant Pollution

Make Your Voice Heard on August 19th

(August 17, 2010)—

Power plant pollution doesn’t just foul the air in a community—it spews across state lines. States can’t stop pollution coming in at their borders by themselves. But you can help. In the coming weeks, you can Fight for Air, along with the American Lung Association and our partners at three U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hearings focused on cleaning up those power plants. The EPA is trying to reduce power plant pollution through its Transport Rule. The Transport Rule will cut power plant pollution that begins in one state, then spreads to entirely different parts of the country. Pollution spewed across state lines from these power plants kills between 14,000 and 36,000 people each year.

The EPA will host a public hearing for the Transport Rule on August 19, in Chicago and we need your support. The Lung Association and our allies will be speaking at each of these hearings to show the importance of reducing that deadly pollution. We need you to speak up, to tell EPA and the polluters that it is time for those coal-fired power plants to stop spewing pollution into your state. If you’re interested in speaking up in the Fight for Air, check out the information below and sign up for the hearing. If you can’t attend, you can still help. Click here to send your comments to EPA.

Make Your Voice Heard

To register to speak at the hearings, please contact Pamela Long at long.pam@epa.gov, or 919-541-0641.  You can find more information about times, location & talking points here. Be sure to follow our tweets @lungassociation & @ALAChicago using the hashtag: #CATR.

Transport Rule Can Protect Millions

The EPA’s Transport Rule will require power plants to install modern pollution control technology in states in the East, Midwest and Southeast.  That technology will make sizable cuts in two dangerous pollutants, bringing down sulfur dioxide pollution levels by 71 percent and nitrogen oxide pollution by 52 percent.  Power plants spew so much of these pollutants that they must be cleaned up if our nation hopes to reduce the burden of ozone smog and particle pollution. In fact, we’re asking EPA to do better—to require even larger cuts in those pollutants nationwide because they do so much harm.

Cleaning up power plants will save lives. EPA estimates that just the reductions in the proposed Transport Rule will save between 14,000 and 36,000 lives a year by 2014. Particle pollution and ozone smog cause coughing and wheezing, trigger asthma attacks, send people to the emergency room and cause heart attacks and strokes, as well as premature death. Millions of people are at risk from this pollution, including children, seniors, those with chronic lung diseases like asthma and COPD, and those with cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.