Joseph Knollenberg: “I think we should stop the presses. It appears that the EPA has their facts wrong again. After weeks of chatter about…”

“I think we should stop the presses. It appears that the EPA has their facts wrong again. After weeks of chatter about proposed new clean air standards and their urgent necessity, this week we find out that the EPA has been given some incorrect or bogus data, certainly very questionable. First, they cried that 20,000 people are killed every year by PM 2.5 pollution. Then it was revised to 15,000. The EPA Administrator, Ms. Browner, paraded before the Committee on Appropriations and my subcommittee to tell us how important these tough standards are and why they were needed. Now we find out it is not 20,000, not even 15,000 lives that are at stake, that we are not even clear as to how many there are. In fact, scientist K. Jones, whose name appears along with some commentary in yesterday's Congress Daily, suggests that because of inadequate research, that EPA's first revision of their data now shows it could be below 1,000, less than 1,000 people are affected by the finer particulate matter pollution. What is the EPA going to do now that this information has emerged? I believe they are hell-bent on imposing tougher clean air standards on our communities, businesses, and residences, even though the air quality across the country, across America, has improved immensely since we began this quest. After Mr. Jones, a scientist, caught them in their first mistake, how can we really trust the EPA data now when billions of dollars in costs are at stake for our communities?”