THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410200403
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 36 lines
The air in 43 metropolitan regions is still failing health standards, and Norfolk still has a ``marginal'' pollution problem, the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday.
The EPA, in its annual assessment of urban air pollution, said 11 cities or counties came into federal air quality compliance for smog-causing ozone pollution during the past year. But 43 other cities, home to nearly 100 million Americans, are still too dirty. That includes seven, Norfolk among them, that failed to meet a 1993 deadline under the 1990 Clean Air Act.
Twenty-two regions, including most of the nation's biggest cities, continue to have such severe smog pollution that there is little hope of meeting federal health standards until late in the next decade.
The Los Angeles basin area, which has the worst air pollution, won't meet federally approved pollution levels until 2010 at the earliest.
EPA Administrator Carol Browner said the trend toward cleaner air, nevertheless, was encouraging news that pollution control efforts - both tougher automobile emission controls and curbs on industrial pollution - ``are yielding real results.''
Ground-level ozone, a major component of smog, causes respiratory problems as well as irritation of the eyes and mucous membranes. Carbon monoxide, when entering the blood stream, reduces the delivery of oxygen to the body.
KEYWORDS: POLLUTION by CNB