This is from MCAF’s newest partner, Union of Concerned Scientists: 

The Clean Air Act  has a 40-year track record of cutting dangerous pollution to protect human health and the environment. Administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), this legislation has prevented thousands of premature deaths and hundreds of millions of cases of respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to regulate emissions that are considered to be pollution and that “endanger public health and welfare.” State governments also have a significant role to play in carrying out Clean Air Act regulations, with oversight by the EPA.

The UCS Clean Air Act “Ticker” shows the net benefits of the Clean Air Act from the law’s passage in 1970 through the present. According to the EPA:

“Most of these benefits (about 85 percent) are attributable to reductions in premature mortality associated with reductions in ambient particulate matter; as a result, we estimate that cleaner air will, by 2020, prevent 230,000 cases of premature mortality in that year.

The remaining benefits are roughly equally divided among three categories of human health and environmental improvement: 

• preventing premature mortality associated with ozone exposure; 
• preventing morbidity, including heart attacks and chronic bronchitis; 
• and improving the quality of ecological resources and other aspects of the environment, the largest component of which is improved visibility.”  ~ EPA, The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020.

LEARN MORE about UCS’s Clean Air Ticker HERE.