Iowans deserve cleaner air

By Ed Woolsey

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I am an avid cyclist and outdoor enthusiast, and for the 30th year in a row, I was a rider in RAGBRAI last week.

My favorite part of RAGBRAI is sharing Iowa's diverse scenery along the route with the thousands of out-of-state riders. However beautiful Iowa's scenery, riders also had to contend with polluted air from polluters both within the state and across state lines.

This year's RAGBRAI route passed through polluted counties in Eastern Iowa. The air quality in Muscatine and Scott counties has the highest levels of particulate matter, a hazardous air pollutant that can contain a variety of components. These counties are exposed to the lowest air-quality levels in the state of Iowa.

Although the Clean Air Act amendments required fossil fuels facilities to install modern emission controls, many coal plants continue to operate without proper equipment that minimizes various kinds of air pollution. As a result, we still breathe some harmful chemical emissions, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

These pollutants can and have caused serious health problems for individuals living in the surrounding area including disease, birth defects, brain damage, premature death and cancers. These pollutants affect human health especially for our most susceptible citizens: children, the elderly, and people with respiratory illnesses like asthma.

To combat this threat to public health, the Environmental Protection Agency has devised a new set of important rules and regulations to reduce air pollution. Of these rules, the two most significant include a proposed Clean Air Transport Rule (CATR), which would reduce NOx and SO2 power plant emissions, and a court-ordered hazardous air pollutants (HAP) rule that aims to reduce acid gases and toxics, such as mercury.

These new standards would help clean the air we breathe in Iowa and protect the health of millions of Americans. These changes are critical to the public's health from pollutants that cause needless death and disease ever year.

Enforcing the EPA's new air standards would benefit the health and well being of all Iowans. We must act now to provide more protection from air pollution, the protection we need and deserve.

For more information and to contact your elected officials, visit www.SupportCleanAir.com.

Ed Woolsey, of Des Moines, is a community wind developer and clean air advocate in Des Moines. He has worked in all aspects of Iowa renewable energy for more than 25 years. Comments: woolsey@netins.net