Jim Inhofe: “tomorrow we will be holding public hearings on a bill that is very significant. It is Senate bill 1084. Back almost a…”

“tomorrow we will be holding public hearings on a bill that is very significant. It is Senate bill 1084. Back almost a year ago, in November of last year, the Administrator of the EPA, Carol Browner, came out with the recommendation and the rule change to lower the ambient air standards as they pertained to particulate matter and to ozone. After looking at this, we found that there was at that time no scientific justification for lowering the ambient air standards. Consequently we started having hearings. Our first hearing was with the scientific community. We had representation there from CASAC, that is the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee. It was somewhat unanimous among all the scientific community that there is no scientific justification for lowering standards. One of the things that was rather interesting that came up in that first hearing was a group of young children, we understand now, that came from some hospital who came in wearing masks, as if to say, ``You must lower these standards or we're not going to be able to breathe.'' I think a great disservice was done because it came out during the course of that hearing that these children used breathers, respirators; they were using various medical equipment that has the chemical CFC in it that allows them to breathe.”