EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Today the Republicans continue their war on the environment. This time we have episode 58 of the Clean Air Act Repealathon.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen who are listening. This is the 58th time the Republicans have voted to weaken the Clean Air Act this year. Today's episode guest stars excessive and unwanted appearances by neurotoxic mercury, carcinogenic dioxin, and deadly arsenic. This bill blocks and indefinitely delays implementation of the rules that would reduce emissions of these lethal air pollutants from industrial boilers and does so in total disregard for the devastating impacts these pollutants have on public health, particularly the health of infants and children.
We already know a lot about these substances. For instance, exposure to dioxin causes delays in motor skills and neurodevelopment in children, impacts hormones that regulate growth, metabolism and reproduction, and has been classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization and the National Toxicology Program. Chromium 6 was made famous by the movie ``Erin Brockovich,'' starring Julia Roberts. That chemical has been linked to stomach and other forms of cancer. And let's not forget mercury, a substance that is particularly harmful to children because it impairs brain development, impacting memory, attention and language, potentially leading to life-long disabilities. The mercury is released directly into the air we all breathe and finds its way into the food that we eat. In 2010, all 50 States issued fish consumption advisories warning citizens to limit how often they eat fish caught in State waters because of mercury contamination.
This bill seeks to permanently eliminate EPA's ability to reduce these toxic emissions from industrial boilers and does so despite the fact that the American Boiler Manufacturers Association, the association that represents the very companies that design, manufacture, and supply the industrial boilers in question, oppose the Republican bill.
That's right, the companies that have stated that they stand ready and able to harness American ingenuity and technological might to design products that comply with EPA requirements in a timely and cost-effective manner oppose the Republican bill here today. And why? Because they believe this bill will only kill what they expect to be a new high-tech engineering and domestic manufacturing job explosion.
So the Republican bill will not only kill people, 6,600 additional deaths per year in the United States according to the EPA; it will also kill jobs.
My amendment is very simple. It just says that the Republican prohibitions on EPA reducing toxic air pollution in this bill are waived if these emissions are found to increase the risk of cancer. This amendment makes the choice very clear. If we adopt this amendment, EPA can continue with its plans to require the dirtiest industrial boilers and incinerators to clean up their cancer-causing emissions and do so while creating American jobs. So we saved 6,600 Americans from dying each year from their exposure to these neurotoxins; and at the same time, we create jobs in our economy.
That's what this is all about. The EPA just has to certify that the Republican approach will not lead to an increase in cancers. That's all that we ask the Members on the floor to vote on today.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. MARKEY. Again, the EPA has estimated that delaying the boiler air pollution rules could cause upwards of 6,600 deaths per year. That's the estimate, but that might be lowballing the number. We all know that parents out there are very concerned about what their kids are breathing in, especially if they live near these kinds of facilities that are spewing this stuff up into the atmosphere. They know how kids can be very vulnerable to this going into their systems as they're growing up.
So to say that there is no health effect and that it can't be specifically quantified--that it's 6,602 as opposed to 6,605--doesn't mean that they haven't come up with a number, 6,600, that approximates what could happen in terms of the number of deaths that are caused by having this bill go on the books.
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