BOWIE, Md. (Aug. 18, 2011)—The Tire Industry Association has joined the American Petroleum Institute and more than 170 other businesses and business associations in signing a letter to President Obama urging him to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's voluntary reconsideration of National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ground-level ozone.
TIA, the API and the other groups asked President Obama to postpone until 2013 any consideration of whether a new ozone NAAQS is necessary.
“Now is not the time to saddle our economy with the extraordinary costs associated with the EPA's proposed national ozone standard,” said Roy Littlefield, TIA executive vice president, in a press release.
Howard Feldman, API director of regulatory and scientific policy and author of the letter, said a new ozone standard could have significant repercussions on the effort to lift the U.S. economy out of its current downturn.
“Air quality has improved, and continues to improve, under existing ozone standards—there's no need to move the goalposts now in the middle of the game,” Feldman said.