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EPA Chief Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Boosting Fuel Profits Ignoring Health Issue

CC0 / / Air pollution
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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a lawsuit for failing to enforce limits on soot emission in three US states to protect fossil fuel industry profits despite threats to public health, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a press release.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — CBD environmental health senior attorney Robert Ukeiley said in the release that inhabitants of the US states of California, Idaho and Pennsylvania desperately need cleaner air, but Pruitt was sacrificing their health to boost fossil fuel industry profits.

"By failing to enforce common-sense measures to reduce soot, [US President Donald] Trump’s EPA is sentencing thousands of Americans to asthma and heart attacks and death," Robert Ukeiley said.

Inhabitants of the US states of California, Idaho and Pennsylvania desperately need cleaner air, but Pruitt was sacrificing their health to boost fossil fuel industry profits, Ukeiley added. The Center for Environmental Health and the Clean Air Council joined the CBD in filing the lawsuit in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

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The CBD said the lawsuit seeks to force the EPA to ensure that communities in California, Idaho and Pennsylvania are taking legally required steps to meet clean-air standards to reduce soot.

"Soot, which comes mainly from burning fossil fuels in cars, power plants and other industrial facilities, causes thousands of premature deaths every year, as well as a range of debilitating health problems for people and wildlife," the release said.

Soot is generated by the burning of fossil fuels and makes its way deep into the lungs and can fester as the body's immune system attempts to crush the interloper.

"An EPA study found that Clean Air Act programs to reduce fine particle pollution prevented more than 160,000 deaths, 130,000 heart attacks and 1.7 million asthma attacks in 2010 alone," the CBD said in the release.

Earlier on Wednesday, the US Justice Department announced in a statement the US state of Pennsylvania had settled a federal lawsuit against steel company ArcelorMittal Monessen for allegedly failing to control the emission of particulate matter.

ArcelorMittal Monessen will pay $1.5 million in penalties and is required to implement air pollution controls to limit particulate and sulfur compound emissions, the Justice Department said. The cost of the anti-air pollution measures is about $2 million.

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